


Stay Safe

by MasonCU



Series: Just [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Minecraft Story Mode (Minecraft), Minecraft: Story Mode - Fandom
Genre: Cryptids, Cults, Demonic Possession, F/M, Filipino Cryptids, Gore, Implied/Referenced Sex, Manipulation, Murder, Possession, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2020-02-18 13:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasonCU/pseuds/MasonCU
Summary: With numerous disappearances happening one after the other, Beacontown and neighboring cities are in hysteria, and Jesse is stressed. When she's added to the list of missing people, the search for the hero leads her friends to an abandoned town, where they find terrifying skeletons in Soren's closet. (Swearing, murder, manipulation, cults, possession, sex— no smut. Remember to read tags.)





	1. Pagpag

**Author's Note:**

> there is so much here and honestly i am so so so sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **January 12/13, 2020 edit;; spelling/typos, added a couple of lines**

**Pagpag, noun; to shake off the dust or dirt**   
**A Filipino superstition**

**in which one must not go straight home after visiting the dead, lest the spirits follow them home.**

* * *

 

“So you think we can do it?”

Jesse looked between Lukas, the resident builder of their group, and Machi, a builder from the south who found and stayed in Beacontown post-Witherstorm. They shrugged. “It’s possible, but if we wanna get it done quick enough in case anything happens, we’re gonna need a lot more people than just us three.” they said with a laugh. Jesse smiled, “I’m sure we can round a few people up. I know some who might be willing.”

Machi nodded.

“Jesse.” They all turned to the doorway where Ivor stood, a satchel in his hand and another slung over his shoulder. “We have to go.”

 _Shit_. The young woman groaned, rolling her eyes. Machi blinked, “What’s going on?”

“Civil Union bullshit.”

“Oh,” the builder frowned, “Them again?”

“Them again.”

Lukas sighed as he took the satchel from Ivor, handing it over to his partner. “This is routine, you know that.”

Shaking her head, a grumble. “I do.”

She checked all the contents, humming when she found all the papers and notebooks were safe and complete inside; and with a determined huff, skip, and a nod, she turned to Machi. “We don’t have to start immediately if you’re comfortable; if there’s anything else you’d like to suggest or bring up or anything, get it to me when I come back, okay?”

Lukas took her by the shoulder, “I’ve got it covered, Jesse.” The two builders smiled, Machi’s turning to a grin. “I gotcha, Jesse! Good luck with the meeting.”

Jesse grinned in return, “Thanks.”

A quick kiss for Lukas, a wave goodbye, “Take care!” and she and Ivor were on their way out, passing quick greetings to everybody they passed. The sky was bright with a new day, the 10:00 AM sky guaranteeing another round of an active 24 hours.

Jesse wished she didn’t have to dread it. 

* * *

 

**“I’m a child in an adult’s world.”**

 

* * *

 

Civil Union meeting venues were cycled between all the members - all members except Jesse, who had no actual “town hall” besides the shelter that turned into the New Order’s so-called ‘temple.’

Today’s venue, at the moment, seemed far more crowded than it actually was. A number of men, women, and villagers spoke amongst themselves, no doubt discussing agendas and plans and progress on whatever hot new thing they decided to spend their time and resources on.

Jesse’s heard them all.

Nobody bothered to talk to her, but she knew that they knew she was here. The prickling, deafening feeling that somebody was watching her, that an eye was following her movements and her line of sight; an ear straining to hear what she had to say to Ivor.

(He glanced her way, on occasion, out of concern; but no words were said. None beyond, “I fucking hate this place.”

A nod and an understanding pat on the back.

Jesse felt she needed an extra hug, too.)

Comprised of people who led towns, civilizations, societies, the like; the Civil union was filled with the stubborn, the headstrong, the people who could quiet a room just by standing silently with the most passive-aggressive aura in the history of mankind. They all seemed to be on their toes, running populations of people, coming up with new ideas that could somehow “progress” the current world’s civilization, make everything more efficient, more productive, more _useful_.

And Jesse would not like to associate herself with these people.

The meeting was the same. They’d discuss possible new trade routes, build roads out of sandstone or some other smelted material. A map was being formed, a map which was supposedly been talked about for a while that Jesse never heard of nor was she ever told about.

Progress reports were being passed around. Criminal activity (rates were low, as per usual), population numbers (one or two new spawns, but that was it), economy, territory, and laws…

Then it was Jesse’s turn.

“Well, we found a lead after gaining reference points from the testimonies of witnesses and the friends of the victims.” she shrugged, mind wandering to the abyss of concern and worry when she fully remembered the case. “We’re planning on investigating that lead either tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on whatever happens within the next few hours. Olivia and Axel may or may not change plans if something happens at Redstonia or Boom Town; and Petra’s on her way over as we speak.”

And then the stares.

“So we should be making some sort of progress over there, at the least. Hopefully good ones.”

She knew she embarrassed herself, she did it every time she came here and talked, but this seemed different. This _felt_  different, this _was_  different. They all had looks of contempt, resistance to roll their eyes or facepalm, looks exchanged between each other in the most obvious way imaginable; they weren’t trying to hide it.

They weren’t even _listening_.

“As for Beacontown,” she continued, giving each of them a hard, knowing glare. They didn’t care about the missing persons case and they all knew it. “The lamps to ward off mobs were finished a long time ago, so there’s no need to worry about an expanding population, so no wall needs to be made, if ever. An emergency bunker under the temple is currently being planned, and it might just go underway sooner than we thought; and food trade with Aristotle is going fine, right? No issue with the cocoa?” The villager in question hummed a confirmation. Jesse nodded, “So we’re good on our end.”

Silence.

Her eyes darted between each member of the union. Twenty people, in total. Thirteen humans, seven villagers; twenty-one members of the union if Jesse included herself. All of them were uneasy, and were none too subtle about it in the process. Most of them were having a silent debate between each other; some were conflicted over something and had foreheads creasing at the arguments streaming in their heads; and at least two knew about what everybody else was going on about and were the only ones with any sliver of sensitivity regarding Jesse. Aristotle, the villager she traded with for supplies, and Gretchen, the human who supervised the settlement that sat right across Beacontown.

Jesse heaved a heavy sigh, leaning over and resting her cheek on her fist.

“But that’s not what you’re here for, is it?”

“Jesse-” One of them started, but she cut herself off. Jesse raised a brow, giving everybody a look that only _beckoned_  them to start.

One of them finally worked out the guts, and he sat as straight as a blaze rod, voice clear and dignified in his ego.

“We don’t think you’re fit for this position.”

There it was.

The heroine clicked her tongue, closing her eyes from the audience and looking away. A bitter smile formed on her face, “And why’s that?”

“You’re too young, you’re _naive_ -”

She barked a laugh, “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” but that only granted her stern looks, grumbles, and an even more upset chieftain.

“You think everything is so simple, but it isn’t-”

“No shit it isn’t, y’all made it too complicated!’

“Jesse, listen!”

She was like a child being reprimanded by her mother, a rebellious teenager being scolded by her father. It felt too real, too true to be natural; like she _belonged_  in this scenario, and in thinking that, she hated it even more.

Rolling her eyes, she fell against the back of the chair and sat, slouching, with the most passive, confrontational look she could ever generate. “What.”

One of them stood up, finally. His eyes were hard in a glare, dark with contempt and fueled to the brim with _something_. Something that made Jesse’s stomach churn, something that made her want to throw up, scream, rip his throat open; the same thing that made her whole body ache and lip tremble and hot tears spring from the edges of her eyes.

(Such a child.)

“The world can’t work the way you want it to work. You’re too stuck in your sensational, idealistic dream of the world that you suggest things that just can’t happen, things that aren’t even realistic-” she asked if they could have more open communication with their respective populace “-that aren’t possible-” because they were too worked up in their own political jargon and strategy to even consider the people and not the numbers “-and it’s getting in the way of progress.”

There it was again.

Another one continued, “We can’t expand our territory and enforce sovereignty when you refuse to cooperate-” she _tried_ , she tried to form a compromise and discuss, but they wouldn’t be swayed. The leader stopped, shaking her head in disdain, “If you remain like this, you are a liability to the Union. This can’t keep going.”

She didn’t yell nor raise her voice, but it boomed loud within the mahogany walls, made her think that maybe Jesse should bring her sword out and start a fight over melting snow and boiling lava, pistons slamming into each other like conflicting ideas and opinions and _ages_.

(She was losing herself.)

A long, uncomfortably dense and irritating silence. They wanted her to respond, nothing would continue if she sat there silent. Undoubtedly, if she stayed long enough, something was bound to happen; and more often than not, that something was an outcome she less than savored. She breathes in. She breathes out. A breathe in through the mouth this time; her eyes open to form a glare, narrow, cross, at the adults around her.

They were all reaching their mid 200s, have long since made the triple digits by this point, and here she was: 29-year-old Jesse, a pup to the rest of the world.

Finally, she replies. “Then what do you suggest?”

“You need a regent, somebody who will ensure that your political action isn’t _misguided_. Somebody you can learn from in a more personal level from on a daily, regular basis.” The villager stuttered through their thick accent, waving their hands around as they spoke. “That way, everything can progress in a smoother fashion for everybody involved.”

...

Jesse would have liked to believe that she’d broken the record for the most unimpressed glare ever worn.

(She could hear the "Somebody who isn't Ivor" they kept in their biting tongue.)

“Really.”

There was a question mark there, somewhere, but Jesse lost it, as well as any want to be willing to work with the Civil Union at this point that she also couldn’t give any more of a damn about what happened to it; or anything, really. It was only two hours after lunch, and she wanted to bury herself under the blankets and slip into the blissful unknown of unconsciousness.

(Not soil, for once. _That_ was the record breaker.)

“ _Really_.”

The person she recognized as Gretchen had his brows furrowed; in concern or some other sort of negative feedback regarding her, she had no idea nor care.

(What did she want? How was she supposed to respond?

What did she want?)

“Why am I even here?” She finally musters. It comes out as a murmur, more for herself than for anybody to answer. Jesse turns to the Civil Union. “Why do you keep me here? If I’m so bothersome with all this- this Devil’s Advocate bullshit-” she shook her head, blinked rapidly; everything was beyond her, “-then why do you keep me here?”

Nobody had an answer.

“What do you want from me?”

“You are an important asset,” one of them said, at the behest of everybody else. The likes of the guilty decorated their faces. “You revived heroic guilds. For the sake of the milestones of history and progress, you are needed to further our civilization.”

(And what bullshit.)

Jesse stared in disbelief, in anger, in unadulterated, numb resignation; resignation to the realization that everything around her was doomed to sink into some form of unbelievable logic.

“You want me because I’m a superpower.”

It was stilted, stuttered, stammered out of the mouth of a kid who felt betrayed, when she really should have expected this.

Then she laughed.

And laughed and laughed and laughed.

“I hate you so much. I hate you so much.”

It always happened. It always ended this way.

Beacontown was supposed to be a safe haven for the weary traveller, the survivor who needed to get a leg up. The temple was a shelter, and it always will be if Jesse had anything to say about it. Everybody was welcome, if they needed a place to stay. Jesse would welcome whoever with open arms, Jesse was always ready to help somebody find themselves again.

Beacontown was an evacuation center. That’s what it was supposed to be. It was a mix of warm and chilly in Beacontown, enough to keep one okay. Okay, okay, _okay_.

To the Civil Union, it was territory.

The miniature garden doll shook her head. “Of course.” A sickening grin tugged at her lips. Twitched. Tears welled. “That’s so fucked up.”

“Jesse-”

“This is for your sovereignty bullshit, isn’t it? I’m your one-man army. That’s why you didn’t even try having Olivia or Axel here, for Redstonia and Boom Town. This isn’t for politics, this isn’t for uniting the nation.” She gasped and gagged, “This- the Civil Union- it’s for an empire, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Her laugh was airy, but the raw betrayal was evident, filling the room like venomous fog. She couldn’t care to note how everybody reacted, she couldn’t care.

One of them called the meeting to an end, and Jesse was the first to leave. Nothing was said to Ivor, she lost her voice. Walking back home, he held her against his side, head on his chest, almost reaching his shoulder. The silence of the forest might have been enough to ground her back to a sustainable sense of reality, or perhaps the smell of cigarettes and the odd array of potion ingredients brought her home.

Whatever it was, it was two in the afternoon, and she wanted to take her mind off the Civil Union; the empire they wanted to build.

* * *

 

  
**“you just can’t stand to see somebody else in the spotlight, can you? just can’t let anybody else win.”**

**-Aiden, Minecraft: Story Mode, Season 1 Episode 5**

 

* * *

 

Fourteen names were listed in a column, followed by dates in the next column; then residences, then reference numbers of testimonies.

Jesse held her head in her hands, combing her bangs back; a useless effort as they fell to her forehead again, messy reds brushing against her eyelids.

Fourteen names.

Fourteen people.

Fourteen times the number of people screaming at the city leaders to find their friends.

(No, stop thinking about them.)

“Here you go.”

A mug of freshly heated cocoa was placed next to her record book, and she looked up to Harper, who slid a medicine-laden cup of water to the seat beside her as she sat opposite to her on the table. She mumbled her thanks, glancing again at the mug before putting the quill down and taking a whiff of the drink.

Laced with the same drug, no doubt.

She wordlessly took a drink of it, downing the remnants of antidepressants.

“How’s it going?” The old woman asks after a sip of her own water, leaning over to get a look at the evidence spread across the coffee table.

“I want to sleep.”

Her deadpan response offers a half-sympathetic, half-unimpressed look from Ivor just entering the kitchen, which she shrugs to with a nonchalance that has Harper concerned. “I’m kidding. But really, I’ve got nothing new so far.”

“Do you want me to help?”

She blinked, “Only if it’s okay-”

“It is, Jesse.” Without missing a beat, the engineer put the glass down and took the victims’ profiles. “Don’t worry about it.”

Anxious, Jesse took another sip of the cocoa.

Ivor made it to the table and thanked Harper for the drink, stirring the contents and taking it himself.

From farther ahead, they could hear the front door opening and closing, the familiar sound of combat boots click-clacking against the tiled floor. Jesse feels a mix of relief and more of the numb exhaustion in her chest as Petra enters the kitchen. “Hey guys.”

“Good to see you back, Petra,” Harper greets her as she stands, giving her a quick pat on the shoulder as she moved to make another glass. The mercenary followed her, insisting on making it herself.

“Liv can’t come,” she says, and Jesse’s heart sinks. “Olivia- well, no, Calvin -said she needs to supervise reconstruction of… _something_ ,” she shrugged, dropping her bag to the floor.

“What about Axel?”

“He’s on his way.”

Jesse let out another sigh of relief.

The remaining two boys arrived. The same handshake with Axel, somehow, took a weight off her shoulders like nostalgia. She greeted Lukas, when he arrived, with a tight hug; which he returned with a quick kiss to her cheek.

“You alright?” He asked her softly, their hands intertwined as they made it back to the kitchen. Axel had gone ahead.

“I could be worse.”

Everybody sat themselves at the table, the empty seat between Petra and Jesse saved for Olivia.

“Should we rebrief ourselves in the meantime?” Ivor had asked, picking up a profile of one of the more recent victims. Harper nodded, turning to Jesse for the ‘go signal.’

“Why not?”

“Can I get a full summary?” Axel cut in, “With everything at Boom Town, I kinda got the case confused.”

Jesse nodded, “Yeah, that might be best. We don’t want you investigating something without even knowing what you’re investigating, right?”

“I think he does that all the time,” Lukas quipped. He laughed when Axel gave him the lightest of punches.

The earliest known disappearance occurred at around the same period of time as when The Order of the Stone got out of the portal hallway; almost a full two years ago. The victim lived in a homestead by a Villager town several miles away from Beacontown. They had a few known friends in the form of trade partners, villager and human alike, and concern for their disappearance was risen immediately to the town’s mayor, who brought it to the Civil Union. Jesse had only found out five months later, in which she also found out that the CU hadn’t bothered to do anything about the disappearance.

They only did something about it when another disappearance occurred, and she pressured them into committing to an investigation.

(“Doing something about it,” being equal to: “If you’re so enthusiastic about it, why don’t _you_ investigate it?” They say to her, then they shoo her away with another set of paperwork for her to do and more meetings to attend in the near future.)

Disappearances were erratic. The victims came from all over the continent, different backgrounds and personalities; all the cases had virtually nothing in common. Jesse had no idea why she thought there would be a connection at all, perhaps she was looking for some form of coherence in all the hysteria. The only excuse she had to keep working was that these disappearances weren’t going unnoticed. Whether somebody was going to look into it or not, people were being missed, and nobody was taking a negligent government if they had anything to say about it.

(Jesse squirmed. When did she become a government figure?)

“Did you seriously get a cease and desist?”

Blearily, Jesse looked up from the record and at the paper in her friend’s hand. She glanced at it for all of a second before she had to return to her seat with a groan. “A complaint.”

Axel read it out in a murmur, sifting through the words. “Another friend of the victims?”

“Two, actually.” She tapped at the profiles of the two most recent victims, “They were a group.”

Petra was bewildered. “When did you get this?”

She racked her brain with the smallest of effort she could muster. Taking out the note from the letterbox, recognizing their friend Arian’s name, and just waking up- “Yesterday?”

The group was silent for a while, looking over all the papers spread across the table, covering it like a tablecloth would. Manila envelopes open with affidavits and reports spilling out of them, folders haphazardly covering different profiles and summaries; on Jesse’s side of the table, notes and charts made of off the data she already had. Testimonies gathered over the months, interesting things she thought she should note down for later reference. She’d been trying for months to figure _something_ out, but so far, nothing has come up.

(Maybe she needed a break.)

“And this is the new lead, right?” Lukas pointed at the fresh new bond paper that sat under the messy journal, mindless scrawls of notes and questions decorating the pages. With a nod, Jesse took it out and showed it to the group.

“I cross referenced everybody’s last known activity. Where they were, who they talked to, and what they were doing, et cetera, et cetera.” She waved her hand, tapping at the new information with the other, “And if I’m right, it looks like everybody was in or headed towards the forest right before they disappeared.”

Petra blinked, scrambling for a map. “This specific forest?” and she pointed at the mass of green that stood between a desert-turned Ice Biome, and the valley that Beacontown stood at the edge of. Jesse nodded, “That’s the one.”

“Pneumonoultra,” Lukas murmured.

“And so the investigation,” Jesse continued, “Was supposed to be us checking that place for any suspicious shit, but…”

A glance at Olivia’s empty seat.

Harper shifted in her seat. “We found something in the Portal Network, you know.” Everybody moved at this, intrigued. “There were disappearances all over the other worlds, too.”

“There were?”

This was news, and none that Jesse was at all excited about. Curious and concerned, yes, and perhaps she was elated at possible new information for the case; but it got the gears of anxiety to turn at a rapid pace.

“Aiden told us about it; he was under house arrest at the time, and so are Gill and Maya. Fifteen people went hunting,” Ivor looked dead into Jesse’s eyes, “Eight returned,” and he dropped the papers in his hand, spreading them in front of him, and he stood to grab a mug. Harper continued for him, “All of the survivors were in shock and couldn’t say anything. The Blaze Rods are remaining under scrutiny for now, but Isa’s confident they had nothing to do with it. She said she’ll send an update if they find anything.”

Jesse felt confusion, worry, and relief within seconds, and she finally sat straighter with newfound energy. “Were all the worlds you visited like this?”

“No, not all; but there were a lot.” Ivor turned, still stirring the drink in the mug. “Each world had different numbers of disappearances. No case files, none of the world had Civil Unions.”

“Lucky.”

“But the Games were affected heavily.”

The young woman’s ears twitched. “They were?”

Ivor set the mug in the coolest-heating oven and returned to the table. “The reconstructed Spleef arena,” he started, “They were supposed to play-test it last month, but before the game could even start, sixteen players disappeared in a snap-” and he demonstrated one for emphasis, one which made the younger Order jump.

“Nothing was left behind. No smoke, no inventories, no dust.”

“So they didn’t die?”

Harper shook her head. “Nothing from the respawns, either. A completely clean disappearance.”

Staring off into the haze, Jesse nodded, hand to her mouth in thought.

(Mariano, a woodsman by hobby, disappeared first, two years ago by the end of the Portal Network event. Sanchez manned a store before disappearing several weeks later, becoming the second person to disappear without a trace. Almira was a mutual friend through the trade web, and her disappearance was an immediate footnote to Sanchez. Matthew disappeared in February, months after Almira; as he headed to the forest to research for a book he was writing. Jaina, Robert, Garry, Boy, and Weislin all disappeared between April 3 to April 10, running errands that had them go near or through Pneumonoultra. Then Tana disappeared in May while going out fishing; and by the months, Markus in June hunting, then Franchesca in July returning home from a mineshaft, then finally Zoe and Patis simultaneously in August, the pair going out on a date.

Most of the victims didn’t know each other, their friends even less so. She’d already gone to ask them if they did, and they didn’t. Not unless they were lying; and she hoped they weren’t lying.

By today, October 2019, those were the last of the disappearances.)

“Why sixteen?” She looked up at Petra, who faced Ivor with furrowed brow. Something akin to fear boiled in her, though wariness and doubt laced the edges. “Only fourteen people disappeared in our world; within the Union’s territory, anyway. And even outside of that, nothing has happened.”

Jesse, as she pitched in, hoped she wasn’t right - “Does that mean more people are going to disappear?” - and she hated being right.

Ivor shrugged. “We can only hope not.” He raised a brow as he reclined into the chair, twirling the glass in his hand, “But that’s why we’re investigating the forest, isn’t it?”

Lukas nodded. “Common ground.”

“So now that we’ve refreshed ourselves on the case,” Jesse sat back, crossing her arms, “Should we wait for Liv and investigate tomorrow, or investigate tonight?” She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, the hands indicating a 4:30 PM. Turning back to the group, she raised a brow in question.

They all looked between themselves, thinking over their answers.

“I think we should go now,” Axel finally said. There were nods and murmurers of agreement. “Liv said she can’t come, and if we don’t wanna have another person go off the radar like that-”

“-It’s better to move as quickly as possible.” Petra finished.

They’d all made their decision. “Then let’s go!”

The group packed their things and donned their armor, checked everything that needed a once-over on their way out. All the glowstone lamps were lit, the torches blown out, and the lamps stationed around Beacontown in place of the wall were already alight by the time the Order got out of the shelter.

“We’ll keep everything in check, Jesse,” Amanda, another one of their own, said with a grin. Machi and a few other townspeople Jesse knew and recognized reaffirmed her statement.

“All of you take care now,” She said warily, “If anything happens, light those beacons immediately, and use the tunnels if you have to. We’ll come running if we can.”

Another person, Rachi, nodded. “Will do, Jesse.”

As they headed out, Jesse called behind her, “And don’t tear Ivor’s house down!” in jest. Amanda had to cover Simone’s potty mouth and stifle a laugh, “Of course!”

The young woman smiled fondly.

* * *

Pneumonoultra was a birch forest northeast of the world. It occupied the land beyond the valley, which was a long stretch of land that used to fall between two volcanos. Both have long since gone dormant, silenced with inactivity; its remaining memory was the forest, named after the disease that had spread through the land centuries before.

Other than that, it was an ordinary forest.

“Is it just me, or is this place creepy as hell?”

“It’s just you, Ax.”

The sun was setting, clocking in at 5 in the evening. Sooner or later, they’d have to start brandishing torches and watching their backs. The forest, despite its average appearance, was oddly quiet. Perhaps that should have reassured her, but Jesse never felt comfortable in silence. Not when they were in a forest.

Lukas tripped on his own foot with a yelp, barely catching himself before scrambling to walk beside Jesse. “You okay?” She asked in a light laugh. He returned it through a grin. “I’m good.”

A short silence. “What about you?”

She frowned. “What about me?”

Lukas mirrored her expression, eyes softening with concern. “How are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. With everything going on, you’ve had a lot on your plate,” he bit his lip, glanced away briefly, “And you haven’t been sleeping as well, I know. You barely even stay the night before you go back to the den.”

Guilt showed itself again to her, Jesse’s eyes downcast at the realization.

“Not that I’m holding it against you,” he reaffirmed quickly, gently holding her arm, then letting it go when she looked back up at him. “I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

(She wasn’t alright.)

Jesse sighed, “I’m fine, Lukas.”

Expecting him not to believe her - and he had every right to, when she herself knew she wasn’t fine - she shook her head. “Look,” taking his hand and squeezing it gently, she managed a small smile, “We’ll talk later, at home, okay? I just want to focus on the case for now.”

“You promise?”

Their eyes locked, as if that was supposed to guarantee the agreement between them, an open doorway with the invitation available.

“I promise.”

Eventually, Lukas, satisfied with her answer, nodded.

For a few more more moments, they held onto each other as they walked through the forest, holding on as long as they could and exchanging small bits of warmth before they had to separate, out of necessity.

The Order of the Stone explored the forest, not separating themselves any fewer or roaming away from the group for long. They stuck together, combing through the entire area for anything out of the ordinary.

But Pneumonoultra was like every other forest, and nothing was new.

Except when the trees started to form screaming faces

It was almost unnatural, uncanny, how it happened. The trees looked normal, like any old birch trunk you would see anywhere else, but if Jesse looked at any moment, any turn of the head, blink of her eyes, and a face would appear. The bark didn’t morph, the shape didn’t change, it was just _there_. As if it had always been there, like that was the tree’s natural form, and she just missed it the first time around.

The screams differed; some were in agony, some contorted into a face of rage, and every variety followed for every tree she came across.

For whatever reason - “Guys, do you see that?” “See what?” “The trees.” “What about them?” - she didn’t want nor bother to ask.

The white and black of the trees, striped in a mess as if a hand smeared ink against parchment, remained.

“It’s gotten really cold,” Harper notes. They’d all dropped their things and took a breather, and the woman took out another coat. Ivor, meanwhile, was looking at a thermostat and a notebook.

“Isn’t it always cold, though?” asks Axel, who isn’t the least bit bothered in all the layers he already wears. Petra shook her head. “It’s only this cold in December, or January.”

Jesse looked down at the notebook with Ivor, finding the average temperature rates of the area. “You’re right, it’s never this cold. Not here, at least.”

“It shouldn’t be” Ivor added. He showed the thermostat to everybody else, who leaned in closer to take a look for themselves. “The lowest average temperature here is 28°.”

Jesse shivered. “And it’s 13° right now.”

“Fucking hell!” Petra swore under her breath. She rubbed her hands once more and put them to her face, not even caring of the fact that she was already wearing gloves.

A strong breeze flew through the trees, pushing against the group with the force of a stampede. They shivered and held themselves in the cold, bracing themselves still. Jesse struggled to get her bangs out of the way of her face, wind or snow getting into her eyes. She coughed and gagged as the wind grew stronger, and in the midst of it, she could hear somebody grunt and fall over into the leaves.

“Who was that?” Lukas called out. She yelled through, “Are you okay?”

Sounds of a struggle, leaves being crunched, and the sound of someone or something walking through the forest. Their footsteps were steady and strong despite the storm.

“Who’s there?!” She heard Ivor call.

Ringing in the air, she could hear a cackle or a laugh, resounding like the jingle of a bell. It moved away, further and further away, deeper into the woods. Then the trees blew and shook, leaves rustling as loud as a jukebox.

Then silence wrapped itself around them like a scarf.

Jesse’s breathing trembled along with her. She didn’t even realize she’d covered her ears as she lowered them to her sides, flexing her cold fingers back to warmth. Her eyes glazed around the area, watching her friends collect themselves after the sudden event.

“Is everybody okay?” She looked to Lukas, who stood beside her, dishevelled and fazed, but otherwise intact. He nodded, breathless; he let go of her hand and held her arm. “Are you?” between gasps.

She responded with a quick nod. The two now knowing that their partner was safe, they surveyed the rest of their group. There was heavy, rapid breathing, grunts of confirmation. Ivor was checking their things, likely to make sure nothing was stolen; Harper, oldest of their group, was gathering herself; Petra rubbed her ears, her helmet off and hair a mess; and Axel fell on his back to a tree, breathing heavily and eyes darting everywhere. Jesse’s eyes widened as she registered her friend tugging at his collar, hands trembling in the air.

“Ax!”

Running over to him, she stopped to let him have air. He swore as he breathed, his chest heaving in panic, sweat dripping from his brow. Jesse kneeled beside him, face scrunched in worry. “Shit, are you okay?”

“I-” he wanted to gasp, but his hands were scrambling for his inventory. Instead, he shook his head, as it was all he could muster. “No,” he mouthed, “I’m not,” in a breathless gasp.

Digging into his inventory herself, “Get your jacket off,” she took out the thermos and handed it to him when his jacket and armor were off; all he had left on him now were his sweater, shirt, undershirt. “You okay, dude?” Petra asked when she ambled towards them. In the background, Lukas had given them a concerned look before checking in on the two elders. The only response to Petra was an unknowing look from Jesse as she bit her lip; Axel, meanwhile, nearly finished his jug of water.

“Shit,” he breathed. Another swear escaped him as his eyes darted everywhere; never meeting his friends, instead switching between the monsters and shadows that might lurk in the darkness of Pneumonoultra.

Jesse noticed his gaze and looked behind her, at the environment. “Hey,” she looked into her friend’s eyes, waiting for him to notice and return the gesture. “It’s alright. We’re here.”

As if it wasn’t already low enough, Jesse noticed the temperature had dropped.

Axel continued to breathe heavily. “Can we go now?” He huffed and begged, “Please?”

“Yeah.” Jesse answered immediately, took the opportunity to get the hell out of there. This place wasn’t making her feel okay. “Of course.” She nodded and fixed Axel’s things in her inventory, as Petra offered to help him up.

After making sure the two were set, she went and told the others. Ivor and Harper were all for leaving if Axel needed to, even if the former wanted to stay and look around more.

“We can do that another time, Ivor,” Jesse reminded him. He grunted a reluctant agreement as he slung their supply bag over his shoulder. The younger crossed her arms, “Besides, it wouldn’t be worth it if one of us got hurt.”

He sighed, a quick, worried glance at the taller man at the other end of the group. “I know.”

As quick as they could, the group returned to Beacontown.

* * *

 

**“Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture.”**

**-Andrew Ryan, Bioshock 1**

 

* * *

 

Making it home, the group dropped, exhausted. Axel retreated to his room, after everybody made sure he was okay; Ivor and Harper had gone to the basement labs; later in the evening, Petra left to finish a deal; and Jesse checked on everybody else, before going to the temple herself.

All the while, Lukas accompanied her.

"Are you okay?"

It came out of nowhere, but at the back of her mind, she should have expected this. She agreed to talk to him, she promised. Jesse closed her eyes, and drew out a long, heavy sigh.

Part of it was because she didn't want to be asked that question ever again.

Part of it was because her chest felt so heavy, it ached. Like she herself was suffocating.

"I don't know," she finally said in a murmur. She didn't move nor look away, or at him, for that matter, but he didn't care. His footsteps were soft against the wood as he walked towards her, and the feeling of him coming closer, the aura he gave off; it was like somebody threw out a life-saver in the cold, dark abyss of the ocean.

He held her close after she let him, his arms wrapping around her like a firm blanket; she closed her eyes fully, this time, and leant into him, nearly gave in and gave up all the weight to fall.

"I'm so tired," she mumbled. "I'm so tired, Lukas."

"I know."

The disappearances, the Civil Union; what they saw at the forest and Axel's panic attack. It built up, steadily, inconspicuously. A mountain of gunpowder just waiting for the one spark, the one slip that explodes into a mass of numb emptiness, the void come to life.

She still wanted to do so much more, today, too; but her arms ached and she felt empty, missing.

Lukas nuzzled into her, face buried to her hair, her neck. A soft, short laugh escaped her, and she held a hand up to brush his arm in affection. He was so strong, to put up with everything, to put up with her, to put up with his own problems; so warm, despite it all. So Lukas.

Humming as she moved to return his embrace, she stopped her eyes from fluttering open and closed and blinded herself in her partner's warmth, mimicking him and burying her face in his shoulder. It was soft, and tender, and the only quiet Jesse wanted from today.

No tense silence. No union meetings. No creatures in the night of the forest.

Just him.

"I love you," she said. Lukas smiled, kissed her neck, and pulled his head away to touch foreheads; his eyes, blue-green with kindness and love, stared into hers; dark brown and longing.

"Are you up for a dance?"

A grin somehow made its way to her face, lighting it up to Lukas and inviting a fond laugh and smile of his own.

In the dark of her room, they kissed, and a hum and soft, short laughter escaped her in the gaps when he pulled her close, held tight and hard as murmurs of variations of “I love you” came in between. He was here, now. After a whole day; a whole day of politics and business and travelling and the anticipation of a monster in dark. Everything shut closed, and he was here; with her, for her.

She loved it. “I love you.”

And it felt so good. The bliss, the euphoria that coursed through her, overwhelmed her to an impossible degree. It blanketed her, tossed and lost her thoughts in the haze that took over her mind. Coherent thought was impossible, nothing but feeling, sensing, soaking everything in without comprehension. The sounds that they both made, the tastes that came from both of them, the immediate reactions that were the most of what Jesse could muster.

Lukas’s kisses and touches that she herself returned, she treasured each one and kept as a memento. She had no idea how they made it this far, how they found each other like this, but she didn’t care. The repetition was hypnotic, the taste addicting. In a fleeting moment, briefly, she thought that she shouldn’t be here, that this wasn’t allowed. As if she was disobeying an unspoken rule; but seeing him here, when she clawed for him and immediately found him within arm’s reach, their hands intertwining, the comfortable place she’d landed in after everything; she lost the ability to care. The smile that she subconsciously formed at it was welcome and treasured.

All that mattered to her was the present, the ‘right now.’

All that mattered to her, at the moment, was Lukas.

Jesse wanted to stay like this forever. She wanted nothing more than for the two of them to remain here, in this state, where they could feel nothing more than want, love, pleasure, blind bliss. A void of pure energy; nothing hallow, nothing dark. Just them. Just them in the simultaneous quiet and loud of everything that was _them_.

Into the night, they continued. Without regret or remorse, until they tired, and slept after goodnight kisses and cuddles and holding each other until they slipped into slumber.

They’d gotten so lost in it all, neither noticed th

**_at I followed them home._ **


	2. Relatonships

**Relationship**

**noun**

**the way in which two or more people are connected, or the state of being connected;**

**an emotional and sexual association between two people**

* * *

 Jesse wasn’t one to leave before saying anything, in whatever situation. Especially in this one, where she usually wasn’t the first to wake up; and even if she did wake up before Lukas did, she’d have probably just stayed until he woke up too, if she didn’t bother to wake him herself.

So one could say that it was jarring for Lukas when he woke up to an empty bed. He wondered briefly if last night was a dream when he felt nothing beside him but the sheets, but they were a little sticky and so was he. He would have blamed it on the humidity, if he weren’t already completely naked, sensations from last night lingering all over him, and their clothes strewn around the room.

The fact that her clothes were here and she wasn’t was a concern, though.

Still, it wasn’t like he and Jesse did this a lot. While she hadn’t left him alone before, there was always a first time for everything; “She could have just borrowed my cleaner clothes and left to work downstairs,” he reasoned. It wasn’t like the current situation offered her a lot of free time, anyway. In Jesse’s words, “Way to go, thinking that the world would be nice to me for once.”

(A mindset he might have to do a little more about, now that he thought about it.)

He could be making something out of nothing.

Groggily, he pulled the sheets off and tugged at the curtains, making sure they were shut before retrieving his and Jesse’s clothes, tossing both in the hamper. _A quick shower would be nice_ , he thought. He made sure the door was locked, then took a towel from the chest and made for the bathroom.

The rain began to pick up as he closed the door behind him.

* * *

  
**“Your lust for blood has driven you in endless circles, chasing the cries of children in some unseen chamber always seeming so near, yet somehow out of reach. But you will never find them, none of you will. This is where your story ends.”**   
**-Cassette Man, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Pizzeria Simulator**

 

* * *

When Petra came back to the temple, it was quiet. She’d expected Jesse to already be working somewhere downstairs, if not just on the first floor in general, but she was nowhere to be found. If Jesse hadn’t been on her mind the entire night out of worry, she wouldn’t have thought too hard on it; but she did, and so she asked everybody present.

Ivor, who was working in the basement, said he hadn’t gone upstairs since he woke up, so he had no idea what Jesse would have been doing; Harper was the same, working on redstone the entire night. Axel had just woken up from a deep sleep - one which he deserved after the other night - so she didn’t try to press him for anything.

(“Come up when you’re ready,” she told him, and left him to his devices.)

Petra concluded that she was still asleep and decided to head for the kitchen to refresh herself with water and a mug, which was where she sat right now. Harper followed her upstairs and joined her in the kitchen.

“So how did the deal go?” She asked, washing her hands of redstone dust.

“As any other deal goes,” The girl shrugged, “Nothing eventful. I got my enchantment books and she got her Chorus branches. Deal’s a deal.” She took another gulp of cocoa.

Harper hummed, “Chorus branches? What for?”

A noose came to Petra’s mind momentarily, but screwed her eyes shut. _That wasn’t my fault._ “Weapons,” - and Jesse wasn’t here, she’s probably asleep upstairs, it’s fine - “Trying to cheat an update.”

“Oh?” The woman raised a brow as she set a towel aside and sat opposite to the mercenary, “How interesting.”

(Not a noose. Not Jesse.)

Petra shrugged, “Yeah, I guess.”

Axel had come up to get water and a sandwich, hair still mussed from turning in his sleep, but fresh new clothes on his back. The two greeted him good morning, which he responded to with a grunt.

Moments of silence passed, and slowly coming closer, the three could hear footsteps rushing down stairs. Petra, for a second, thought it would be Jesse, but the person who came into view was Lukas, his hair soaking wet.

“Hey Luk-” “Have you seen Jesse?!”

The anxiety inside her began to pick up, but she drowned it with another sip of the chocolate. Harper, meanwhile, blinked at the interruption, shared a quick glance with Petra and Axel, who shrugged and shook their heads. “No, I haven’t.”

“Me either. Why?”

The young man’s breathing was heavy and panicked, his eyes wide with fear. “I think she’s been kidnapped.”

Axel bolted up immediately, hands gripping the table tight. Petra rose from her seat, trembling. “Like those missing people we investigated yesterday?”

Lukas nodded frantically.

* * *

Five members of the Order stood in front of Lukas’s bedroom: Petra, Axel, Ivor, Harper, and Lukas himself, whose hands were keeping themselves busy in anxiety. Staring at the wall with scrutinizing eyes were the elders; behind them, Axel paced, tense, anxious, _angry._

(His friend’s disappeared. His friend’s disappeared. Memories raced through his head in the panic; treehouse, pig, games, fun, jukebox, _friend_ \- how is she? Is she okay? Is she dead?)

A million thoughts ran through his head. Gritting his teeth against each other like mortar to a pestle was the only other way he could relieve himself.

(He didn’t want to wake up to this.)

On the outside wall of the bedroom was scrawled text, graffiti written messily in dark red. The only thing assuring Ivor right now was the fact that he couldn’t smell blood.

“4, 78, 0” The graffiti read.

After looking over the graffiti again and again, Axel repeated the numbers to himself, flabbergasted. “What the hell are these supposed to mean?” Memories of everything he knew about his friend flashed in the blink of an eye, adrenaline fueling his drive. He looked to Lukas, accidentally raising his voice but not caring to fix it. “Jesse liked these code-word things. Maybe that’s that? A…” he racked his brain, but he couldn’t remember the word, “a cracker?”

“A cipher,” Lukas corrected, not bothering to laugh as he shook his head. “And no, it can’t be that. The alphabet only has 26 letters. These numbers have a 78.”

“Shit!”

Axel continued to pace. The others had eyes narrowed in scrutiny at the scrawls; until finally, one of them went, “Those are coordinates.”

Everybody turned to the Old Builder, who stepped closer to the wall, a hand reaching out as if to touch it. “Longitude, latitude, and altitude.” She pointed at each as she said it, “4, 78, 0.”

“The three dimensions!” Ivor exclaimed.

Harper smiled fondly at him and nodded. “Wait,” Lukas put his hands on his hips, “Weren’t those the things that used to be used for maps? I read about them in the encyclopedias.”

“Indeed they were,” the old woman glanced back at the graffiti, “The longitude is the coordinate representative of North and South placements; the latitude indicates East and West; and altitude represents the aerial coordinate.”

Axel groaned, “But what does that _mean_?”

“It means it can tell us where Jesse is!” Lukas gasped, “Right?”

“Yes,” Harper paced in front of them. “Before I left, the Old Builders were working on installing an update into the Atlas. They called it the Network Positioning Tracker. You input the three coordinates, and the Atlas will lead you right to it. It could work in individual worlds and everything.”

“And?” Petra’s eyes narrowed at her, “There’s something else to this, there always is.”

She looked at her once, then she sighed, her shoulders slumped. “The technology was stolen before they could install it.”

Axel frowned. “By who?”

“Soren,” she said, and everybody grumbled. They all knew about his books being everywhere, they all heard Harper confirm his status as a senior Old Builder when Jesse asked; they all knew about Soren.

They were all sick of Soren.

She continued, “He took the technology with him when he left. It might still be out there, assuming _he_ is.”

“He will be,” Ivor said within moments, a nonchalant wave of his hand.

Lukas decided not to question the man’s confidence. If anything, he _agreed_ with him.

“So we look for Soren,” Axel concluded. He sighed. “Easier said than done, then.”

“No shit.” Petra huffed and turned to the elders, “Where are we even supposed to start?”

“The only play we know he would be,” Ivor uncrossed his arms, “His fortress.”

With a frown, Lukas asked, “How are we supposed to know he’d be there? We have no idea where he’s gone after he retreated. He wasn’t even at the ceremony after the Witherstorm.”

Doubt grew once more in everybody. Ivor sighed.

“No, but we have to start somewhere.”

“Then come on,” everybody turned to Axel, “What are we waiting for? We have to go!”

The group looked between themselves, unsure of the other’s course of action. Lukas himself looked down, eyes lost in the wooden floor of the corridor.

Jesse was lost; she could have been taken just like all the other people in the missing persons case. If not for her - to make sure she wasn’t hurt, to make sure she was okay, to find out what the hell happened to her - then for a lead. Where er she was, it had to be where everybody else disappeared to as well.

And if not that, then they had to do something.

There can’t be a world where his best friend, his partner, his lover, disappears and he does nothing about it.

He bit his lip, clenched his fist, and with a firm nod, he looked up at everybody else. “Axel’s right. We have to get going.”

One by one, their resolve came to.

“We have to go,” Lukas told Simone. Her and Renee were fixing the wiring of the lamps. “What for?” She asked, her brows creased in concern. She looked between him and the rest of the Order. Harper, Petra, Ivor, Axel, and him. Her frown deepened, and behind her, Renee had stopped working as well, fully turned to Lukas to listen in. Simone’s frown deepened. “Is this about Jesse?”

In a panic, Renee dropped from the stepladder. “What happened?!”

Although he felt for him, Lukas kept a straight face. He learned from Jesse that panic was not ideal in front of the people who relied on you. “She’s not here, we don’t know where she is, but we have a lead that might show us the way to her and possibly the rest of the missing people.”

“You mean you might find everyone?” Another townsperson, Johnny, asked from the store he was listening in from. The rest who were in earshot looked on with concern and hope. Internally, Lukas cursed himself for giving them a promise he might not be able to fulfill.

“Don’t get too ahead of yourselves,” Ivor interjected, to a few glares and looks of contempt; but he continued regardless. “As much as we want that to be true, we don’t know that yet. Not for sure. It’s best to just lay low and keep everything in order for now.”

Citizens listening in were disgruntled, but none of them said anything.

Lukas nodded. “You guys stick to yourselves in the meantime, okay? We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

“What if the Civil Union come for us?” Renee questioned, worried. Johnny gasped, “Yeah! What if they’re the ones behind this? They don’t like Jesse, right?”

(Lukas winced. Word gets around fast.)

“Like Ivor said, we don’t know.” His eyes were hard and firm as he looked between the townspeople. “Listen, we have to go. If Olivia comes by, tell her to meet us at the Old Order’s temple, and that we’ve gone looking for Jesse.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

Everybody jumped at the sudden intrusion. Approaching from behind the group was the growing engineer herself. Her eyes were blank as a sheet, but her face was contorted into something dark, something serious. Her hair was down in a messy tail, red robe long abandoned for a blue coat; her green beanie was the same, full head of hair exposed to the elements.

Axel’s heart churned in a torn dispute of emotions, but he managed to be relieved all the same. “Liv!” “You came!”

She walked towards them steadily and slowly, standing tall next to Harper and Petra. “I heard and came as fast as possible,” she said. Olivia looked between the members of the Order. “We’re headed to Soren’s fortress?”

Lukas nodded. “It’s the only lead we have.”

Olivia’s lips hardened to a thin line. “Then what are we waiting for?”

The Order of the Stone complete, they bid their goodbyes to Beacontown, and with the coordinates in hand and motivation to look for their leader, they set out for Soren’s fortress. 

* * *

 

**“I that am lost, oh who will find me?**   
**Deep down below the old beech tree**   
**Help succour me now, the east winds blow**   
**Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go.”**

**-Eurus Holmes, Sherlock Season 4, The Final Problem**

 

* * *

“So how’s the reconstruction going?”

Olivia blinked, as if she’d been in a daze. She turned to Petra, who caught up to her from behind. “What?”

“The reconstruction,” Petra kept her hands in her jacket pockets, “I thought you were supervising something, Calvin told me. It was a reconstruction?”

A few more seconds of stunned silence from Olivia, but then she shook her head and grinned. “Oh, that,” she put a palm to her forehead before letting it back down, holding her hands behind her back. “It’s going.”

At this, the mercenary raised a brow. “That’s it?”

Olivia frowned. “What’s it?”

For moments, Petra blinked, dumbfounded, at her friend. The two continued walking, trailing the group at the back. “Calvin was making such a big deal out of it, he said you were,” she raised her hands, “‘raging against the heavens!’ or something.”

The frown didn’t leave Olivia’s face, but she sighed. “Look,” she shook her head, “It doesn’t matter now, alright? Our main priority is looking for Jesse and bringing her back home,” she turned her head straight for the path ahead of them, beginning to walk faster than Petra, “So that’s what we should be doing.”

The other girl gave no time for a response, as she left the mercenary dumbfounded behind her.

“Okay…”

Olivia had walked further ahead than everybody else, now leading the pack to Soren’s fortress. Nobody else but Petra had noticed, too preoccupied with other things in their minds.

“If we don’t find Soren in his fortress-”

“Don’t.”

Axel’s frown deepened at the shorter man. “Lukas-”

“We shouldn’t be thinking like that,” he says curtly.

“We can’t just run around blindly if we find nothing!”

Then Lukas whipped around to face him. “Last I checked, you didn’t care jackshit about plans, Axel.”

He glowers at the griefer, as much as he could with the height difference. The group would have stopped walking completely had Olivia not been ignoring their dispute and Lukas had immediately continued forward as if nothing happened.

“If we don’t find him there, _or_ at the Temple,” with his voice dripping venom, “Then we’ll figure something out. We always do.”

Axel’s brow furrowed. “But what if-”

A squeal.

Everybody simultaneously froze.

The leaves rustled, even with the lack of a breeze. Branches were tossed around, hands were grabbing at the back of trees and letting the splinters scrape their skin.

An inhuman cackle.

Instinctively, all arguments were dropped in favor of weapons being drawn, a circle formed by everybody scanning the perimeter. Bows, swords, a lit torch.

“Guys-”

And it flew right at Olivia, a yell interrupted from her mouth when it pinned her to the ground and _screamed_  right at her face, mouth wide and dripping with blood and saliva and other ghastly fluids. Its teeth were sharp and jagged, some cracked in half and others misshapen.

“Olivia!” Axel yelled; he immediately darted in and drove the lit torch right into the creature’s head. It whipped up directly at him, an excruciating, audible _crack!_ erupting from its neck. It lunged for him next, dangled hands and feet at his shoulders and waist. Embers from the torch and its burning innards fell through the holes torn all over it, landing everywhere it turned. Axel fought it off, stumbling.

“I’ve got you covered, Ax!”

Lukas fired an arrow straight for it, barely grazing his spine as it pierced the tree. Olivia got up with bow drawn and sent another one, hitting it directly in the ribs as Ivor threw a potion of slowness on the struggling duo. Immediately, Harper ran and pushed the creature off of Axel, a slow, strangled cry coming out of it.

“That potion won’t last,” Ivor said through raspy breath. Nobody questioned him, or could, as Petra immediately leapt in, yelling. She straddled on top of the creature, blade drawn overhead, and drove the sword right through its eye.

The creature defeated, everybody gathered themselves and lowered their weapons, “What the hell?” muttered under their breaths, as Ivor went to help a struggling, recovering Axel to his feet. Harper crept closer to get a look at the creature, curious.

Then, all of a sudden, its head _snapped_ right at them, flesh and bone tearing as it passed the sword like it was air.

**It’s not fair.**

And a scream rang through the forest, the plains, the mountains; mechanical and glitched, interference splicing the ribbons into strings.

Petra didn’t even register the creature disappearing from under her until she dropped to the ground with a yelp, and the fog started to cover the surroundings of a road _not known for fog._  The growls and inhuman, computer-like squeals of the creature returned.

“Run!”

With no hesitation, Harper grabbed Ivor’s hand and ran, her pace picking up the farther they went. Everybody else followed suit, despite protest of exhaustion. Their legs carried them and worked faster and harder as they heard the creature scrambling after them.

**_It’s not fair._ **

Olivia screamed back at it, “Nobody cares!”

“There’s no time for that!” Petra grabbed her by the wrist and bolted with the rest of the group. The engineer begrudgingly followed, but her dark gaze glared straight back at the creature running after them.

 ** _IT’S NOT FAIR_**  

* * *

 

**“Look straight ahead and tell me what you see**   
**Do you really think that that is what you see?**   
**Look straight ahead and tell me what you see**   
**Your perfect world don’t give a fuck for me.”**

**-Ham, Tokyo Teddy Bear, Neru ft. Kagamine Rin**

 

* * *

As a surprise, yet relief, to all of them, they made it to Soren’s fortress completely intact.

While everybody heaved for breath, scattered at the remnants of the statue hall, Olivia grabbed a small piece of debris, tight in her hand, grazing her palm and bleeding; and threw it as hard as she could into the water nearby with a yell. It only skipped once before it sank into the manmade lake. The woman flexed her bloodied fingers, breathing heavy and guttural. “I can’t fucking believe this,” she growled, pacing in circles and not at all minding the looks from everybody else. They’d all only exchanged glances before Harper decided to not prod the younger girl, instead walking for the hall intersection, where remnants of the statues that inhabited it stood. Ivor guided her there as the younger Order moved to their resident engineer.

“Liv?” Axel started. He hesitantly raised a hand to her shoulder, “You okay?”

“No, I’m not _okay_ , scumbag,” She spat.

Everybody jumped, startled.

“That _thing_!” She pointed at the air behind her, trembling, eyes wide and nasty, glaring. “Is ruining _everything._  This is sabotage! That fucking entitled brat of an operator-!”

Lukas stepped forward, “Olivia, what are you talking about?”

“I-” but she stopped herself. She inhaled deeply through the nose, then yelled a wordless cry right after as she turned away from the group, startling everybody else.

Finally, she sighed. “It’s nothing. We should get going.”

Axel swallowed, frowned. “If it’s bothering you, it’s important.”

(Nevermind that he had no idea what she was talking about, or that she insulted him just seconds ago.)

Olivia’s face, in contrast to everybody else’s, was blank; as if she wasn’t just ranting in a rage.

Everybody waited for her to say something, _anything_ , perhaps another uncharacteristic outburst, but nothing came out. All she could get herself to do was to shake her head - in dismay or resignation, nobody knew. She moved without another word, following Ivor to the center of the statue room.

The stunned silence lasted for several moments.

“What’s her deal?” Petra wondered in a low voice, turning to the two boys. Lukas shrugged; Axel was focused on the retreating woman, brow furrowed in concern.

He pocketed the issue.

They followed without another word. At the end of the hallway, below the Amulet ornament, Ivor was digging through the wall; at the entrance of what crevice he was making, Harper had stacks of TNT in both hands. Olivia was already there, watching with arms crossed.

“What the hell,” Petra twitched, “Is Ivor doing?”

Harper opened her mouth to answer, but Ivor beat her to the punch. “There’s a passage through here,” his voice echoed in the tunnel, which had gone deeper than what the group saw. All of them looked between each other, weirded out. “Soren covered it up a long time ago.”

Lukas blinked. He and the rest looked up at the Amulet decor attached up above, at level with the Order’s statues. “With the Amulet?”

“No.” Lukas blinked, mouth open to question, when, “With a statue.”

From the tunnel, Ivor appeared, no worse for wear. “But that’s a story for another day.” He turned to Harper, who handed him the TNT, which he accepted with gratitude. Then, to Axel, he held them out. “Would you like to do the honors?”

Axel had brightened up considerably. “We’re blowing it up?”

The older man nodded, handing the eager griefer the TNT necessary. He stepped to the side and pointed into the tunnel. “All the way at the end there, I made a cave. Fill it up with TNT.”

“On it!”

And before Lukas could call him back, he’d already sprinted through, his cheers echoing in the cavern. They watched the dark tunnel Axel had run through, in varying emotions.

“The TNT isn’t really necessary, by the way,” Ivor added quickly. Everybody turned to him with shock and frustration. “I just think TNT is a good way to catch Soren’s attention.”

“Ivor!”

“Also I want to blow this place up.”

Petra's face contorted into comedic rage. _**“IVOR!!”**_

On cue, a massive explosion sounded from the other side of the wall, Axel’s celebratory “ _WHOOOOOOOOOP_!” accompanying it. All but Ivor jumped at the sudden sound. They could hear the explosion and fall and crumble of stone and the shattering of expensive material go farther and farther away from them; until it stopped in the gust of a hush.

Axel came out of the tunnel just then, covered in soot but otherwise intact. “That went really far in,” he said to Ivor as he handed the old man back his flint and steel. “Like, there was this gigantic wall covering up an entire mineshaft.”

“You saw it through the explosion’s light, didn’t you?” Ivor said, voice suddenly low, “That’s Soren for you. He did not want anyone to find that place.”

“It was a really thick wall,” the griefer contended.

Petra blinked, “So there _is_  a tunnel back there?”

“Oh yeah. Huge!”

None of them noticed Lukas stepping ahead of them. He already stood in front of the tunnel’s entrance with his arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “Can we get a move on?” His voice pierced through the conversation, turning everyone’s attention to him, “The faster we find Soren, the faster we can get Jesse back.”

For a moment, Ivor was going to object or say anything to Lukas, but he merely shook his head. “Let’s go, then.”

Olivia went ahead of all of them with a grumble, Lukas following suit; everybody else, in the awkward silence, did the same.

With torches lit, they went through the tunnel, climbed through the cave Axel conjured with the TNT and through the massive hallway hidden by the Amulet decor at the junction. At the trip of a wire, lights immediately flooded the room, sea lanterns giving a soft hue through the damp, dusty corridor.

“Look at this place,” Axel breathed in awe. Harper let out a laugh, “I should have expected this.”

Her eyes glazed over the quartz and the diorite lining the tunnel. “Quartz is a favorite of the Old Builders, but Soren especially loved Sea Lanterns.” At the mention of this, Ivor’s eyes flickered to Harper. “They were all that lit his palace when he was still around. It’s been torn down now, I think. I never asked.”

Ivor couldn’t look away from the sea lanterns that patterned the ceiling and walls, shimmering in each other’s lights. What were rarities for all of them was a plentiful resource for Soren; no doubt either a result of his skillset, or a creation of the Command Block. “Do you ever really want to, when it’s Soren?” He murmured.

“What I want to know,” Lukas interjected, “Is why Soren had this whole place in the first place?” He looked to Ivor, “Why hide this massive passageway?”

Olivia scoffed, “Obviously, because he wanted to hide something.” Pursing his lips, Ivor tilted his head. He wouldn’t disagree.

“Yeah, but what?”

“Probably his involvement with the Old Builders.” Ivor shrugged, voice bitter and uncaring. “Experiments he didn’t want anyone to see.”

Axel’s brow furrowed. “I thought that was what the End was for? You know, his Enderman experiments?”

“Soren had many things to do, he’s a busy man,” Harper glanced at all of them. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had multiple labs for his experiments. This whole place could be a facility!”

“It is.”

Surprised, they all turned to Olivia, who walked ahead of all of them; her pace was brisk and rushed, fists tight and knuckles white. “This whole place was dedicated to experimentation. It was his * _fortress_ *; Soren didn’t need anymore isolation than what he already inflicted on himself. There are plenty of rooms here that could solely be fore * _one_ * experiment.” She turned her head slightly, eyes covered by the view and her bangs, “And the fortress is massive.”

Ivor remembered beds, an invitation, minecart rides, and libraries and secret passageways.

“What makes you say that?”

Without missing a beat, Olivia shrugged. “We had to go through a lot of rooms to find you, back during the Witherstorm.”

Axel and Petra exchanged looks, but neither knew any more than the other; a shrug was all that they could do. It wasn’t like Olivia was wrong.

Ivor himself had his eyes narrowed at the girl’s back, suspicion and wariness rising.

(Cuddles turned to kisses turned to more into the night, theorizing together, building together, teaching each other, and-)

His breath hitched.

(Soren did a lot of the teaching, didn’t he?)

The next moment, he was looking away, uneasily biting his lip.

Nothing more was said as they traveled further into the hall. 

* * *

 

**“Don’t make yourselves the villains in my story.”**   
**-Ivor, Minecraft: Story Mode, Season 1 Episode 2**

 

* * *

The hidden part of Soren’s fortress confirmed Harper’s suspicions: that the entire place was an experimentation facility. Displayed all over the wall in front of the group were dozens upon dozens of signs, arrows leading this direction and that, jumbled letters mixed together in some pattern Ivor couldn’t be bothered to try and decipher again.

And with that, another junction.

Different halls, different doors; dumbwaiters, stairs, elevator shafts.

Staring at it all, Ivor could only shut his eyes tight, shake his head, and steady his breaths.

(Disappointed, but not surprised.)

He’d seen this place before, when he stole the Command Block from Soren. He thought that maybe after the Witherstorm, Soren would try to be better, or tear everything down, or do _something_  to fix it.

But he hadn’t thought of him in years.

And of course, in those years, Soren hadn’t changed at all.

Not when everything looked like it was still lived in.

“How are we supposed to navigate this?” Lukas grumbled, foot tapping the floor impatiently. “This is all gibberish!”

“No,” Ivor shook his head, sighing. “It’s not _just_  gibberish. They all mean something; it’s probably a cipher.” He glanced meaningfully at Harper, “One not even you know about, I’m sure?”

The woman shook her head, stopping at the younger man. “No, I don’t.”

A heavy, exasperated sigh; one which made Harper pat his back sympathetically. “Of course,” he mumbled, shoulders sagging. He was clearly exhausted.

(Not from their journey so far, Harper knew. He’d told her about Soren. She’d thought before about the old man potentially hiding things from the Old Builders too, for whatever reason he may have had.

It seemed like he might have after all.

Seeing Ivor like this - knowing that Jesse, of all people, was gone too - made her chest heavy and ache.

She could do nothing but sigh.)

“So,” Axel started, walking in front of everyone else, standing next to a hall; one which he lit up with the flick of a switch. “We do the next best thing.”

“We can examine these halls.”

Olivia pointed at another hall. It was similar to the one Axel stood in front of; cream-colored walls, doors and smudged windows lined the hallway. Before Harper or Ivor could protest, she said, “We won’t go too far. One or two rooms, maybe. If we find anything, we’ll come back and tell everyone.”

“Process of elimination!” Axel exclaimed from the other end of the hall. He wore a silly grin, as if he was proud of himself.

“But that would take too long,” protested Lukas. “Who knows how big his fortress is? You said so yourself,” he pointed at Harper, “This could be a facility.”

Olivia crossed her arms, frowning. “We don’t have many options.”

“But we also don’t have a lot of time.” Petra moved forward, armor and weapons clanging like cymbals as she paced in the junction. She looked between the hallways that Axel and Olivia one-by-one turned the lights on for, the dumbwaiters, the signs; between the rest of the group. “If we split into pairs and go explore for an amount of time and come back, will that do something? Can we work with that?”

“We shouldn’t go too far off,” Ivor agreed. “Ten minutes, twenty. Don’t go into anything that might lead to a secret passage, come back and report to everyone else if we find something.”

Lukas sputtered, “W-wait, how are we supposed to know what will or won’t lead to a secret passage?”

He gaped when Ivor shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”

“Actually!” Everyone looked to Axel, who raised his voice with glee and excitement. He brought out several 64s of TNT and tossed them to everyone.

“Axel-!”

“Why don’t we just use these?”

Petra glowered at him. “Axel, these are explosives.”

“Yeah, I know, but Ivor said that it’s a good way to catch Soren’s attention, right?”

Ivor blinked at him, mouth falling agape. “I-”

The griefer pulled out a pair of flint-and-steel and pointed at it, “We can use these to signal to everyone else that something’s happened, or that we’re trapped!” The grin on his face widened, “We can just punch our way through to you by how far the explosion was!”

Everybody else in the group was either astounded or dumbfounded. Lukas blinked, opened his mouth to object, then was interrupted by Olivia; who had a small, but noticeable, grin. “That’s perfect.”

Axel beamed.

They all had objections, all of which Axel immediately hashed down and clarified. The sound of dozens of TNT can penetrate any wall, any material is breakable and a separate room can be made to explode the TNT in, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, the New Order surrendered to his plan, and they agreed to meet back in twenty minutes if nothing happened.

Ivor, all the while, was struck by Axel’s earlier credit to him. Harper had given him concerned looks as he blinked hazily, the two of them walking through the hall. They’d all already split up.

“Are you alright?” She stage-whispered, leaning down to look at his lowered head. The younger blinked rapidly, sputtering. “H-huh? Sorry, yes, I’m fine.”

Harper raised a brow, lip tugging upwards at the corner. “You sure about that?”

He huffed, crossing his arms. “I’ve been better.”

For the moment, Harper only hummed.

The hall was long and empty, going so far and so long with no doors to be had. Ivor’s head darted between every spot, every corner, possible. For any traps, any signs, any markings, _anything_  Soren might have hid.

Harper bit her lip as she watched her comrade walk, trembling.

“This must be hard for you,” she murmured, “Coming back.”

Ivor had told her about his past relationships some time ago. After Jesse asked her about Soren’s books and after she explained everything to those who were interested. He told her about Soren and his lie, he vented about the revelation that he’d lied to Ivor about more than just the Command Block, he wondered if his then-partner, the first person he ever devoted himself to, had lied to him about _everything_.

Optimistically, Harper thought to reassure him that there must have been something about Soren that was real; but Ivor was a cynic, a pessimist, through and through.

Truth be told, she wasn’t even sure if the two of them were anything. She understood if he didn’t want to start a relationship. It’s not like he told her necessarily, but being several centuries older than him, being an Old Builder, being someone who knew Soren as well; none of those factors combined might have helped him.

She isn’t sure she could trust herself with him, really.

Yet still, she leaned down to look at him again, face scrunched in concern. “Is something on your mind?”

Ivor didn’t look at her, though his breathing trembled, his whole form did. He shook, his steps were erratic - light and heavy - and he stammered.

“I hate this place."

(Coming here and being lied to, living here with a liar of a boyfriend, stealing the Command Block, losing everything to the man he was supposed to be able to trust.)

Harper slumped, frown deepening, shoulders sagging.

One could say that Jesse was his favorite, of everyone in the New Order of the Stone. They were a duo, a ‘dangerous combination,’ according to Lukas. They got along, they were one and the same, they were equivalent to each other in their respective generations. Mischievous, loving, critical, empathetic; they took on the world as best as they could. You could say they were father-daughter and wouldn’t be wrong in the slightest. They might as well have been.

And here Ivor, only a couple of centuries old, might be outliving the 29-year-old.

(As the only near-millennia old in the group, as the person who owed it to the young woman for helping her beloved town, her best friends, out of mechanical limbo; she couldn’t stand the idea of outliving someone with as much potential for a bright future as Jesse.

She couldn’t stand the idea of outliving anyone, in general.

And anyhow, she shouldn’t immediately jump to Jesse being dead. She’s not dead. She can’t be.)

Sympathetically, Harper pat his back softly, rubbed circles gently.

That was all she would allow herself to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pacing and chapter length...concern me
> 
>  **January 13, 2020 edit;;** reworded a couple of lines


	3. Necessity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> advanced apologies and condolences, i fcking hate this chapter bye

**Necessity**

**noun**

**the fact of being required or indispensable;**

**an indispensable thing**

* * *

 

It didn’t take long before Petra and Lukas found a room. It was small, almost quaint. A couch, file cabinets, several tables and a jukebox. Papers littered the entire room, a box of leftovers overrun by ants.

“I can’t believe this,” Lukas said under his breath. “He actually has a living room?”

Petra picked up a potted plant, raising a brow at Lukas’ frustration. “What’s so unbelievable about a living room?”  
  
“He’s a kook, and he had an entire lobby in his wool world,” he glared at the infested lunchbox on the coffee table. “I’d rather more insane builds from him than anything resembling normal.”

“That sounds weird, but I can’t put my finger on why or how.”

Lukas shrugged. “Don’t bother too much with it. Let’s just keep looking.”

“Way ahead of you, dude.”

The unextraordinary room, unsurprisingly, had nothing extraordinary about it. All the cabinets just had books and photo albums and journals in them, the couch was like any normal couch; there was nothing unusual. Nothing that _helped_.

It only aggravated Lukas more.

He kicked the coffee table out of frustration, causing Petra to jump and cuss and the scavenging ants to scatter and run about.

“Sorry,” he says under his breath.

She looked at him with furrowed brow, concern and confusion written all over her face. Crossing her arms, she asked, “What’s gotten into you?”

Lukas looked away. The look she gave him only annoyed him further, and that exacerbated his present frustration. Even though it was disgusting, he focused on the trail of ants instead.

“I’m just- stressed, okay?” He says a little too harshly. He winces at the volume of his own voice and the vulgarity, at how Petra must have been taken aback by it.

He tried to loosen the tension all over him, flexing his fingers and trying to even out his breathing.

Mindlessly, the ants continued to crawl about.

“I just don’t want to lose Jesse.”

The ants took the leftovers and sped away, tearing the cold food down to nothing.

“Okay.” Petra swallowed after a long sigh, nodding. “Yeah- yeah, I get’cha.”

The tension in the air could be cut with a knife, like the one that was left on the table, stains of food and remnants left all over it. Ants were invading that too.

“Just-” He felt her eyes on him, though he didn’t reciprocate. “Just try to calm down, right? That’s something Jesse would say. Don’t panic too hard and focus on the mission.”

Lukas chuckled humorlessly, already evidently distracted and thinking about something else; the ants and the trail they took. “That’s a blurry line I already crossed.”

He then pushed the conversation away and squat down to look at the ants closer.

Petra blinked down at him.

“When I said ‘focus on the mission,’ I didn’t mean squint at the ants.”

“No, no, look-” He got up and looked at her this time. Lukas pointed at the ants. “They just got here, they’re still gathering food. If this place has really been abandoned for years- since the Witherstorm- there shouldn’t be any leftovers here that ants haven’t already finished!”

They both looked go each other with eyes wide in realization.

“Then that means-”

“Soren’s been here.” Lukas grinned, “He’s been here, recently. He must’ve just left.”

Not minding their conversation at all, the ants continued their mission, taking the bits of food they could find and bringing them home to their brethren. From the box, to the table, to the floor, to the wall.

A wall with a gap.

Not a crack. Not a weather of the wall.

Petra followed the ants’ trail, running her hand all over the wall the ants disappeared to.

_Thud!_

* * *

Renee jumped at another rumble of thunder, this one closer than the last. Gloomy clouds rolled ever more into Beacontown’s skies with every passing minute, the sky growing darker and darker. Johnny took his shoulder, tugging him close and rubbing comfortingly.

“I’m scared,” he said softly. Lightning flashed in the sky. “I feel like something’s gonna go wrong, and I don’t know what, or why.”

Whatever Johnny wanted to say was interrupted by a loud knock at the door.

The couple opened it to Simone, with Machi and Amanda behind her. “Can we come in?”

Though still surprised, they let them inside, the group running in hastily.

“Why are you here-?”

“We need to get started on the bunker,” Machi said, voice trembling as they, Renee now noticed, sweat all over. “Jesse’s gone, the Order’s away; we’re all in danger.”

Johnny frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“The Civil Union doesn’t like Jesse,” Amanda said, as she held the doorknob down. She didn’t look away from the window. “If she’s gone and so is the Order, _and_  a storm is coming? They’re probably gonna ring a State of Emergency alert and come for us. We need to act fast.”

“Listen, I know Jesse being missing is a big deal and all, but to play Devil’s Advocate, isn’t this a bit of a leap?”

To the surprise of Renee, none of the three blew up at him. Machi shook their head. They explained, “A villager from Aristotle’s village came with supplies. He said the typhoon’s already started to flood the village when he left.”

“There wasn’t even a forecast for it,” Simone added.

Anymore protest from Johnny caught in his throat.

With the sky flashing once more and another roll of thunder, Amanda looked at them expectantly.

“Guys-” Renee said, breaking the tense silence as he looked to his boyfriend. “What are we even supposed to do? None of us are- We’re not- _equipped_  for this. This isn’t our thing!”

He had to agree. Yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off the shovels and pickaxe the town miner had in his hand.

Simone broke through.

“Maybe not,” she said, “but this is _our_ town. Jesse helps us and defends us, but we need to do something to keep ourselves safe.”

(“We live in a dangerous world,” He remembered reading her say Lukas’ book, about how she went after the amulet and fought with Petra. “Everybody should know how to defend themselves. We have horrifically high chances of dying any day because of zombies, creepers; any mob out there, any force of nature, could kill us without warning.”)

Simone held out a hand. “Come on. The faster we get this done, the safer we are from whatever shitstorm’s coming for us.”

(“If everybody relies on one person, then the whole world dies.”)

Immediately, Renee took his partner’s hand, giving a determined nod. “We should go help.”

Johnny stared at him in disbelief or hesitation, lip trembling, eyes wide. Renee nodded with hard eyes.

From there, it took little convincing.

* * *

**There are a lot of people in history who are forgotten  
** **And the people who win turn out to be the good guys  
** **After I die, I wonder how many days it will take for people to forget about me  
** **I’m sure there isn’t an answer to that.**

**\- Lovers’ Suicide Oblivion, OPA + Asaki No’9 ft. MEIKO**

* * *

Axel dropped himself on a pile of dust, the mattress giving out under him and a cloud erupting. From wherever she was among the sea of boxes, Olivia said nothing indicative of irritation. At the back of his mind, he figured she was.

He found that he couldn’t care too much for that, and he berated himself.

Less than a decade ago, he would only _dream_  about going on adventures or raiding temples, leaving explosions in his wake as mobs or mooks perish. He thought he would do that with his friends. He thought they’d be there for each other for everything, no matter how far apart they were; lost at Endercon or in the forest or in a mineshaft - it didn’t matter. They always found each other. They always got out.

Yet document after document after boring useless text after the other, Olivia with the cold shoulder and Jesse missing without a word; he feels alone.

He knew things would change. He knew that when he and Olivia first became friends. He knew that when they found Jesse. Things always changed; if you make TNT explode in a place that was subject to another explosion before, it would change too. The pit would get deeper, the gravel would break, the dust would spread.

Things change.

But this was whiplash to him. Like Olivia was a different person, and that Jesse would be gone forever.

(He hated the gross, inky shadow of guilt that crawled up his back.)

Axel realized, when he pushed the thoughts away and tried to concentrate, that he’d reached the bottom of the box. Papers were littered in a circle around him, discarded.

This was the third time he had to gather the useless papers and stuff them back in their useless box. He grumbled to himself, picking one of them back up and going over it again; thinking that if he reread them he would find _something_.

One.

After the other.

And the other.

And another.

More and more useless, meaningless papers. None were interesting. All of them old, completed experiments. Big, red stamps yelling COMPLETE, COMPLETE, COMPLETE.

Another.

Another.

Until the box was almost full again, and the paper in his hands now was just full of black. No red stamp. Just notes.

In some other language.

His brow furrowed. How could he have missed this one?

The griefer scanned the room again, going over all the boxes they did and didn’t go through. Olivia was at the other end, covering the entrance half of the room. He had no idea how many papers or notebooks she found or read through, or if she kept any of them. He himself had only gone through three boxes.

He looked back at the jumbled up letters covering the entire paper; the only one that wasn’t completed. At the top, the only understandable word: “Project OMEGA-R.”

“Axel,” from the other end. “Are you done?”

Olivia stood up, a notebook tucked in her arm. “Twenty minutes are up. We gotta go back.”

He folded the paper, keeping it in his pocket.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

* * *

**“When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town gets wiped off the map; I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. […] I want it to hurt, because that means it meant something. It means I am something, at least.”**

**-Mae Borowski, Night in the Woods**

* * *

They made their way back to the junction, walking at a brisk pace with arms stuffed full of journals and fillers of notebooks and papers.

“Lukas,” Petra said in a breath.

He didn’t divert focus from the path ahead. “Yeah?”

“Remember what I told you?” She asked, “Stay safe. I know it’s hard, but- try not to stress yourself out too much over this, okay? Jesse wouldn’t want that for you. If you got hurt while trying to get her back-”

“She’d be stressed the fuck out,” Lukas finished for her, a laugh coming out of him. “I know.”

Petra bit her lip, though shut her mouth against her nervous instinct.

When they reached the junction, they dropped everything they had, startling both Ivor and Harper. “Sorry,” through shallow breaths. “We found some shit.”

Harper raised a brow as she leaned over to pick everything up. Lukas went in to help her and organize everything on the floor. The senior raised a brow at her, “What kind of shit?”

“Journals, notebooks,” Lukas said, “But they’re all encrypted. We have no idea what they say.”

“Encrypted?” Harper echoed. She took a notebook and flipped it open.

Ivor watched them from behind Harper, slouched over and hugging his knees. Neither of the two minded as they got to work, sorting out their find and waiting intently for Harper to speak.

“Oh,” a tired smile came over her face, “These are our ciphers.”

“‘Our ciphers?’”

Lukas and Petra shared a glance.

“We had a special encryption system for important documents,” Harper explained, “It was to keep unauthorized personnel away. Some of us even had our own individual languages for our own purposes.”

“Okay, well- can you decrypt this?” Lukas asked, sliding a laboratory report to her. She nodded. “It might take a short while, but I can.”

The pair sighed in relief. “Thank you.”

They all sat down, gathering themselves and waiting for the last two to arrive.

Petra looked around the junction, observing Harper decoding and Lukas filing away; and Ivor sitting alone, his head tucked in his arms. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Was he sick? Lazy?

She blinked, remembering one of the books they found, and where they were; about how he acted when they got here.

“‘Scuse,” she said quickly, cutting in between Lukas and Harper to retrieve a specific leatherbound book, and walked over to Ivor. She tapped him lightly on the arm, and dropped the book on his lap when he looked up. He blinked at her, surprised.

“It’s some sort of journal we found in Soren’s living room,” she said, “I thought you’d wanna see it.”

She turned away without letting him speak and returned to Lukas and Harper. Axel and Olivia returned, by then.

“Did you guys find anything?”  
  
Olivia was going to answer “no” and shake her head, but Axel piped up with a folded paper from his pocket. She turned to him in surprise as he explained, “I found this in one of the storage rooms.”  
  
“All the other papers I found said ‘complete,’ except this,” he explained further. The man sat down next to Harper and Lukas, offering the paper when the Old Builder asked.

Olivia watched them, standing stockstill at the entryway; nobody noticed her surprise, as nobody did Ivor’s widening eyes at what he continued to read in Soren’s diary.

“I see none of us had to use that TNT,” Petra said humorously. Axel gave her a humored smirk. “You hold on to them. Might need them sometime later.”

“What have you found?”

Their attentione turned to Olivia, who crouched beside Petra, looking down at the papers. “We found all these encoded papers in one of Soren’s rooms,” Lukas, tucking away papers, said, “Harper says they’re all written in Old Builder ciphers.”

“And on that note,” they all looked to Harper, “None of what you found is important to Jesse, or where she might be.”

Their expressions fell.

“But what about this?” Axel held up the paper he found, which Harper took again and read over. Her forehead creased and eyes narrowed at what she read.

“I don’t see how this one’s important either,” she said.

“But what’s _in it_?"

The woman frowned. “It’s a project he must have started hundreds of years ago, possibly with the other Old Builders if this paper is correct; though I must not have been there for it.” She looked up to the younger spawns, explaining as she went, “They were working on failsafes in case of a repeat of this event we labelled ‘World’s End.’”

“World’s End?”

The New Order looked between themselves, sharing worried glances.

Lukas unsubtly began to write in his journal, “What do you mean by ‘World’s End?’"

Harper sighed. “A long time ago, the world was destroyed by an explosion that no-one ever foresaw, or could even explain.”

Axel looked up to Olivia, as if to share a glance, but she was staring at Harper intently; her lip was trembling, her fist tight and shaking, and he almost, almost, could her her teeth grit.

“I spawned a long time after that event, I’ve only heard about it in a few stories- but I digress.” She looked up to Axel, holding up the paper. “The reason this of all the papers you found is incomplete is right here. The experimentation and testing apparently came to close to being found out by,” she shrugged, “ _someone_ , somebody they call “Recipient,” and the project has been on standstill ever since.”

Olivia’s scowl deepened, and though Axel noticed, he said nothing; fearful of what she might do.

(He was familiar with her wrath.)

“I-” Petra slumped, “And that has nothing to do with Jesse, does it?”

“No.”

They all jumped when Ivor suddenly spoke; he was turned to them with darkened expression and the journal tight in his hands, closed, and the ribbon hanging loose out of the spine.

“I know where Soren is.”

Soft gasps of exclamation.

Olivia raised a brow. “How?”

The man held up the journal in his hand, old and weathered leather dangling bits as it swung. Harper’s eyes widened.

“He’s at the old temple,” Ivor said, breathing heavily. “And if it helps, I think what he’s doing might have to do with that project you’re all talking about.”

* * *

**After the years we’ve been together  
** **The joy and tears and all kinds of weather  
** **Someday, blue and downhearted  
** **You’ll long to be with me right back where we started**

**-After You’ve Gone**

* * *

The Old Order’s temple is miles and miles away, but they run, and they don’t stop. They have so much to lose, so much at stake; they can’t risk anything.

They run.

But they can only go for so long.

They walk, gathering their breath and only a few blocks away from the temple, heart drumming to get on with it and find Soren and get Jesse back as quick as they can. The tempo their chests heaving for breath mirrors the fall of the rain; the thunder, though it causes them to shudder, does not make them waver.

Not even Olivia.

Harper doesn’t notice her presence behind her until she speaks, the woman reacting with a yelp and a jump at the sudden interaction.

It’s only the smallest of hindrance against their journey.

“Harper,” Olivia starts again, “Could you explain something to me?”

The Old Builder blinked at the younger spawn, mouth open, confused. “Sure? What is it?”

Olivia put her hands behind her back as they walked. “Those projects you talked about. Could you tell me more about them? What projects did you know about, and which ones did you work on?”

Those who were in earshot - Petra and Lukas - glanced their way, anxious. Harper stayed silent for several moments, lips pursed and eyes tracking Olivia’s movements.

“Why are you so interested in hearing about them?” She finally said, carefully, slowly. Olivia shrugged.

“Humor me. What do you have to lose in telling me?”

As their eyes locked, Petra and Lukas conspicuously edged closer to the engineers, wanting to hear more. Axel didn’t have to move to eavesdrop; Ivor tried to ignore them.

“We Old Builders,” she swallowed bile, bit her lip. “We weren’t just those torturous games you saw, with Hadrian. When I was still there, at least, we were a small civilization. Only a handful of us were just civilians- farmers, fishermen; those few had humble jobs. Most of us?” Harper chuckled. “We were trying to reach the stars.

“I went to ‘school’ with other younger spawns, people who spawned after the first World’s End; with Otto, and Hadrian, and Mevia. We were classmates. Some graduated early, some late; but at the end of the day, we all eventually chose what we wanted to do from there. I remember, a lot of my classmates just wanted to go back to the village and form their own path.”

A nostalgic smile formed on her face. Petra decided to not complain and ask her to get to the point, as she saw that Lukas and Olivia were invested.

“The rest of us, me included, decided to work for our elders. We started out small, working our way up the ranks at the laboratory, until we ourselves were working together to try and cheat our way through the future for our civilization.”

Ivor couldn’t help, then, when his head whipped to Harper, at the word “cheat.” His eye caught Axel’s, whose mouth hung open in shock.

“The project you found, titled ‘OMEGA-R’?” She turned briefly to Axel, “All our projects were titled using Alphanumerics from the Other World.”

“The ones we can find in the Encyclopedias,” Olivia muttered. Harper nodded.

“Exactly. When I was still there, we were working on quite a few experiments,” she glanced at the New Order. “You’ve seen the fruits of some of them yourself.”

Axel blinked. “We have?”

“PAMA was a product of two projects I was a part of, Projects Epsilon and Gamma,” the Old Builder explained. “We were experimenting with automata theory and how far we could push the boundaries of Redstone. I was sent to Crown Mesa to further test our theories; my other laboratory partners did the same, for other worlds.”

“You colonized them.”

Ivor stopped to look at Harper. “That’s what those Old Builder temples were, weren’t they? Laboratories.”

She bit her lip, eyes darting away momentarily, hand clutching her forearm.

“Yes. Those, and so much more.”

“Why did you feel the need to do these projects?” Olivia inquired. “What was the point?”

Harper shrugged as they all continued forward. “I guess we just… did, because we could.”

A scoff from the younger engineer.

“That sounds about right," she said, causing Harper to wince, ashamed.

“Okay, guys- I hate to interrupt the exposition-” Petra took their attention, pointing towards the building on the horizon, “But we’re close!”

“Let’s go!”

Lukas ran ahead of the group, followed closely by Olivia, giving neither Harper nor the others any time to fully process what had just occurred. The rest of the group followed suit.

The creature watched from the trees.

* * *

 

**“Until we reach the last edge, the last opening, the last star, and can go no higher.”**

**-Enfys Nest (Glyn Dillon), SOLO: A Star Wars Story**

 

* * *

The temple was in disrepair.

It already was the first time Axel ever saw it, but it was worse now, even if the Witherstorm did virtually nothing to it, even near it, to damage it. Parts of the added shell he and Lukas added back then were now gone, some of it chipped away, crumbling to dust. The vines took over more parts of the place, covered it in green and hid away the original building; looking at it from afar, it almost looked like it was being pulled into the ground.

Their group marched forward, and though some asked “Where could he be?” and commented “This place is a mess,” they moved, led by Ivor. The man knew the place like the back of his hand, and even in the dark, they tread without stopping, with no obstacles to block their path.

Finally, they found the place Ivor wanted to show them. Down the corridor, from round the corner, a dim light flickered. Through rubble and old stains and weathering structures, there was the room whose doorway was blasted open; in that room, the group could see Soren tearing something apart, stumbling and struggling and heaving ragged breaths. He swore loudly.

Then immediately after, he gasped, inhaled sharply, and turned to the rest of the group before they could even make it ten feet to him.

“F-!” He cursed, stared wide eyed in shock as he stumbled backwards and almost fell into rubble and glass. “ _You_.”

“Soren,” under Lukas' breath.

“I thought we’d find you here,” Ivor said as they came into the light. Soren trembled.

“Ivor-”

He shook where he stood, only steadied by the frail build behind him that was already breaking down, visibly aging and crumbling to pieces. Soren asked with shaking breath, “Why are you here? No- _how_  are you here? I thought-!”  
  
“You thought _what_?”

“Jesse is missing,” Lukas cut in. He stepped in front of Ivor and stood face to face with Soren, at eye level, glaring daggers. “You have something we need.”

“Soren.”

The chaos stilled. It almost seemed like Harper’s voice rose above the others’.

“What are you doing here?”

…

The temple was in disrepair.

“Remember the Network Positioning Tracker, Soren?” Harper started slowly, “The project was left unfinished when you left.”

Lukas had to be kept from coming at Soren and tearing his throat out for answers

“Why do you need it?” He’d asked in a panicked yell, “Why are you asking?!” The old man stuttered and stammered. If he wasn’t a mess before, he was now; his hair was everywhere, mussed and messy; covered in grime, wide eyes bloodshot and sunken. It seemed like he wore those same clothes for days, possibly even years.

“Soren-” Olivia started, but she was interrupted.

“I don’t have it,” he says without stopping, causing everybody to yell out immediate, instinctive frustration. “I don’t have it! I destroyed it a long time ago, it’s gone!”

“Dammit!”

At the back, Lukas kicked nearby garbage away. Harper sighed, exasperated, even though she knew that that was the answer she should have expected. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?!” Petra grumbled in frustration. Axel was lost on what to do. Soren was lost on what was going on.

His old friend- he rolled his eyes and nearly yelled out in frustration, but the old man held back. Coming closer, Ivor growled under his breath and said in a low voice, “Soren, Jesse is missing.”

The news came to Soren’s horror. “M- _Missing_?” he stammered helplessly.

“We found coordinates outside her room, that’s why we needed that tracker update.”

“Coordinates?”

Slowly, Soren seemed to finally understand what was going on, if only an inkling of it. Olivia watched him with a tight-lipped frown. “What coordinates?”

“4, 78, 0,” Lukas recited. He turned his head to glare daggers at the man, who inhaled sharply at the revelation. “That’s all that was left behind.”

Soren shook his head, breathing wildly. “4, 78, 0?” His lips trembled, “No no no no no, that’s not possible. She can’t-”

“What does that mean to you, Soren?” Olivia questioned. She tilted her head upwards, “What does that mean?”

Soren was frozen, yet erratic, in horror.

“I know where that is.”

...The temple was in disrepair.  
  
The whole group shared questioning looks. Skepticism, exhaustion, excitement. Soren couldn’t be bothered to explain himself, nor did he bother to help.

“I can’t,” he stammered, “She’s gone, I can’t help you, I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

The place was crumbling to pieces, wearing down with age after being left unattended to, abandoned, for decades. The earth was swallowing it whole. It was dying a natural death. Now that the truth was out, there was no need for a relic like this to keep standing anymore. A natural death for an unnatural lie that has finally been exposed; that was fitting, wasn’t it?

A natural death. It was all you could hope for if you were Soren.

But if you were Soren, you wouldn’t wish for death at all.

If you were anything like him, you wouldn’t even understand what that was.

“4, 78, 0,” he started. “That’s a hopeless cause, if we go there, we die too. I’m sorry-” He shook his head frantically. “I can’t let you go there.”

“What the hell is so bad about this place that you can’t even talk about it?!” Petra exclaimed. Even she was becoming far too fed up with the bullshit; all that was left was for Axel to blow up.

“Soren?”

The two Old Builders locked eyes. Unlike everybody else, Harper wasn’t anywhere near losing her patience; but if this kept up, she would be losing somebody important to a dear friend. Of the whole group, she was the only one who had any idea on how to talk to the man, after centuries of working with him.

(Was that any more than what Ivor knew, though?)

“Please. We need you to tell us.”

Ivor continued, saying plainly, “We won’t stop looking for her even if you keep your mouth shut, Soren. You might as well tell us.”

It wouldn’t hurt to tell the truth, telling lies would make more damage than repair.

Why else is the temple falling to pieces?

As Soren’s resolve withered, so too did the world around them.

Reality was in disrepair, and I watched the future crumble to pieces.

“If there’s going to be a lot of explaining,” Olivia said before he started, “Then wouldn’t it be best if we got going as you did?”

Soren was hesitant to follow, but he did so to the insistence of everyone else he trusted.

* * *

“4, 78, 0 is the catholic coordinate of the Dead Zone.”

They went west of the old temple, north from there in almost the same general direction of Beacontown. A storm was brewing far behind them, the thunder rolling and lightning with it. They walked at a brisk pace, with Soren leading the way and Olivia tailing the back; everybody but Axel tried to be as close in earshot as they could to hear his explanation.

Axel himself just wanted to find Jesse and bring her home.

“In every world, no matter what, the Dead Zone will always be found at those exact coordinates.”

“Okay, but what the hell is it?” Petra asked for everyone.

Soren clicked his tongue as he tried to come up with the words to explain. He fidgeted as he walked, eyes both darting between everyone in the room and avoiding them, as if not seeing them would negate their existence.

He didn’t even need to look up to see where they were going, something Ivor noticed was contrary to his usual stammering, clumsy staggering.

(Then again, he could have been putting on an act for that too.)

“It’s a place of exaggerated negatives,” he explained, “All the world’s negative data is stored in there, compiled and turned into hybrids and twisted evolutions of each other. It’s very complex,” he said with confidence Ivor was both familiar with and yet never heard before. Harper herself, when he looked, didn’t seem bothered by how he was speaking as opposed to what he was saying.

“Nobody is supposed to survive that place,” he said to the alarm of the group. “Not one person actually has the capacity in any respect to withstand that kind of energy- the atmosphere of the Dead Zone is basically toxic to every living being. You would die the moment you entered.”

“Then how the hell-"

“But!” He raised a finger, interrupting Axel with a brief look and scatterbrained, rapid-fire words. “It’s entirely possible that a creature could leave the Dead Zone and take something from the outside, here, back with it inside.”

**Like me?**

“I don’t know why,” he continued, “But that’s the only explanation I have at the moment.”

“Is that why you said Jesse was a goner?” Lukas asked, “Because nobody could survive the Dead Zone?”

“Precisely.”

“You suspect otherwise, though.”

Soren looked to be greeted with the hard, dark eyes of Ivor, heavy with shadows and nearly hidden by messed-up hair. “You think she _can_?”

An apprehensive silence. Soren swallowed bile, and slowly, he nodded as he looked away momentarily. Ivor’s stare, him, was something the old man couldn’t escape no matter how hard he tried.

“Yes,” he choked out.

“But how?” Axel piped from the back. “I mean, I’m glad to know that she could still be alive, but _how_  can she survive something no one else can?”

(“Because she’s Jesse and Jesse is special over everyone else?” Olivia suggested in a deadpan tone. Lukas heard it as sardonic and sent a brief glare that he didn’t know the old friend caught.)

More silence from Soren, not an answer as rain began to fall over Beacontown. It rained hard and heavy, the thunder was loud, the lightning bright. Over where the group was walking, it was still dry, but not even their half of the world was immune to the dark skies beginning to creep in through the clouds.

Distantly, heard by almost no one, a creature gave out a wet, distorted cackle.

Finally, Ivor cut through. “It’s the pod you were tearing apart in your lab.”

Soren winced violently. He looked away and bit his chapped lips hard. Everything hurt. His eyes burned.

“What pod?” Petra blinked, “Wait, that was a pod?”

“Why were you tearing it apart, Soren?

“I-” He inhaled sharply, “I can’t tell you, it’s not important.”

He prayed for something to save him, to interrupt the moment, for him to just teleport them to the Dead Zone already and show them just how hopeless the situation was.

His prayers were heard.

The creature was burned and scarred, charred to the bone and black with soot and dried blood. Yet it still bled, and even though it was, at this point, a withered skeleton of only decayed innards and peeling skin, it could still scream; and even though it had no eyes, it could still see. Its soul, angry and confused and in pain, leapt at his targets, prepared to tear them apart.

Petra did that first with her sword the moment it landed on Olivia and squealed. The engineer pushed it off of her with grit teeth, annoyed to hell and back, and screamed at it, “Fuck off!”

**TAKE ME BACK**

“We have to go!” Lukas yelled, “Run!”

They did. The writer fired arrows at it aimlessly. As Olivia screamed back at it, Axel took her hand and rushed with her ahead, interrupting her abruptly and against her will; though she cooperated anyway. They ran and ran, and Soren did so, not knowing what to do even though he knew exactly what the creature was.

At some point, when the lightning flashed, beyond the trees, past a river; the creature was gone. When they finally stopped to breathe, when they really looked around them, the New Order recognized the valley leading to Pneumonoultra.

“Wait.” Axel breathed, “Why are we here? What are we doing here?”

“The Dead Zone.”

Soren stood rimrod straight as the group looked on at the now dreadful, dark path towards the forest. Between the two volcanoes, the grass was rich; yet under the dark sky, it was darker than Chorus. The wind that blew with the oncoming storm was cold and unforgiving. It brought even Petra to a shiver.

“That’s it.”

* * *

 **Mommy, my mommy, why did you exhume little me?** ****  
**If I was just a problem, why give birth to me?** ****  
**Daddy, oh daddy, am I Adam or am I Eve?** **  
****Cutting down the tree that God had made for me**

**-MOROS ft. GUMI, Dear Mommy**

* * *

Axel felt his breathing pick up to an alarming rate, anxiety running through his blood and bones in a way it never had, as they entered the forest once more. The giggling, the sirens, the noises that were wet and distorted, reverberating with the birch trees that looked like they were scratched with blood; they sent a chill through his spine that he only wished he could scratch off and tear to pieces over fiery pits.

(He would think that Pneumonoultra was his newest, greatest fear; and now, he wouldn’t be wrong. What comes next would fall under that category, if he had anymore time to live to fear it.)

At some point, the group found a treehouse, one that none of the New Order remember finding. They were confused, for sure, and scared. But only Soren approached it with any semblance of confidence.

“It’s here,” he said to them in a low voice, “This is how you enter the Dead Zone.”

The creature chasing them watched among the leaves, breathing through cracked ribs, his breaths coming out like gargles, garbled whistles.

“Are you sure about this?” Soren asked hesitantly.

Lukas answered with a hard voice, deep and determined, and though he wasn’t unafraid, he didn’t hesitate.

“If it brings us to Jesse, then take us there.”

So they climbed the treehouse. One after the other- Harper, Ivor, Soren, Lukas, Axel, Petra, Olivia.

**Me.**

Come the surface, the group wasn’t greeted by an actual house. Not a cozy home or a personalized living space, but an environment that made them overwhelmingly uncomfortable. It was dark, everywhere they looked seemed to be under a green tint; decaying and withering, almost _real_. Yet it seemed to be thriving too- expansive and still alive, like the world was in a constant cycle, a paradox between life and death; or that it was _both_ alive and dead.

There were trees. There were houses. Though not a sky in sight, though there didn’t seem to be any light, they could still see around them perfectly. Everything seemed almost _normal_ , in a twisted sense that none of them could understand.

There was one thing they did understand, though.

Lukas gasped, almost felt relief wash over him as he recognized the figure standing on an incomprehensible pile of decay. Even if she was in white robes, even if the sky was dark, it was like a spotlight or some sort of saintly glow emanated from her.

Perhaps he was delusional.

But her name escaped his mouth anyway, and he didn’t recognize it as out of fear rather than relief until she actually spoke.

“Welcome to my home,” ‘Jesse’ said to them with a lopsided, bleeding grin. “You finally found me.”

Thunder lit up the nonexistent sky to armies of amalgamations surrounding the New Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god theyre finally here


	4. Chimera

**Chimera; noun**

**a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve**

* * *

From left, right, back, and center; there were flurries of coats and dirt and dust and aged blood. Snarls, howls, squelches and clicks at the back of rotten throats rang through the poisoned air. Axel could feel the effects sink in quickly. It felt like a more toxic, more disgusting version of Boom Town; as if somebody had infused gunpowder with pufferfish or rotten meat. He felt sick to his stomach, like a coiling slug in his abdomen, poisoning him from the inside.

He could still stand, but he felt like any minute now, he’d break. Even in the cold air of the Dead Zone, he was sweating already, feeling uncomfortably hot and _ill_.

“Jesse,” in a white cloak, grinned at them devilishly from the mound of dirt and bone in front of them. Next to “her” was a large oak tree.

(The same kind that they built their treehouses in.)

Axel swallowed, face grim and brow furrowed, eyes narrowed; squinting through the light dust storm brewing through.

That wasn’t Jesse.

“Finally,” The person in white said. A short laugh escaped her and echoed through the air. “All sixteen pieces are here.”

Her eyes darted, for a split second, to Soren; everybody noticed her red, blaring eyes move and flicker, but none knew why.

“You, Order of the Stone, will be witness to the end of time.”

The cloaked figure plunged her arm into the tree beside her, triggering a sickening CRACK! Making Axel violently flinch, making everyone worry at what had just happened; but none of them could figure it out, in the few seconds they had.

The wind blew and whispered distant voices past their ears, rushing through and gathering the unseen poison in the air, the green and blue and yellow and red swirling into a vortex and being sucked into the bark of the tree, through the fibers; and all of it went to Jesse. What sounds the Order heard were the needles plunging themselves into Jesse’s arm, sticking into her blood vessels and pumping all the poison inside; melding the cells together into a new form, and she adapted in real-time. A glowing, color-less array of light cracked through her skin, through the scars none of her friends noticed until the light shone through, blinding them with her deafening laughter.

In that moment, Axel felt fine.

In that moment, the cultists attacked.

* * *

They were deformed.

It was a wordless thought that Axel had subconsciously formed at the back of his mind as he swung his Knockback-Fire axe at the creatures. He’d learned quickly enough that his fists or lit torch alone wouldn’t do the job against them, when they were in their domain. The monsters had the home advantage, and Axel barely knew enough about them as-is. For the most part, he dealt enough damage to keep them at bay and give him time to eliminate the ones that periodically crept closer.

In the midst of this battle, he couldn’t give himself the time to think about what everyone else was doing.

Normally, they as a group moved in sync. They could see each other and give signals and remember their training together; but now, for some reason, that wasn’t the case. It was as if the creatures specifically cornered them, isolated them away from each other so that they had to fend for themselves, alone against waves upon waves of creatures.

They were like zombies.

Petra had noticed that when she got a close look at one of them, a robe-less creature that, when she could think as their swords met and she struggled, wasn’t the only one. Several of the creatures around her had no robes, and she could have sworn that all of them did. Perhaps it was a trick of the light? Perhaps it was the few cultists that she’d met blades with and promptly lost, their red robes flying and smudging her vision? Perhaps it was the blood?

She brushed the thought away as she pushed the humanoid creature to the ground and reduced it to dust. Thinking can wait.

Another cultist - one that was definitely in robes - ran towards her and swung an enchanted, iron axe.

As they fought, as their blades lit up the space between them, Petra was taken aback as she recognized the face of the cultist fighting her.

It was a person she’d made a deal with years ago.

Guilt took its opportunity, then, to snatch her heart and suffocate her; and she fell. Petra couldn’t do anything in milliseconds of time she had to fight the beast that soon crawled over her and grinned.

She blacked out comparing Jesse to the person she recognized.

* * *

None of her teammates noticed that she’d gone down. Beyond the sound of shrill, inhuman cries against scratchy screeches; the sounds of weaponry slicing through the air; the sounds of blood being spilled and cuts tearing open on scarred skin; there was nothing. They all piled up on top of each other, layers upon layers of noise that merged into one barrage of stimuli.

Nobody could have heard the thump of an unconscious, human body against the falls of heavy, deformed creatures.

(To that effect, nobody noticed how Olivia fought- or rather, _struggled_  to fight.)

“Soren!” Harper yelled over the chaos. She, the Old Builder, and Soren, her senior, were the only ones who were able to multitask in a sense while defending themselves and taking down what they could.

“If you hadn’t noticed-”

The old man knocked a creature over with the speared butt of his bow before he fired a flaming arrow at another that approached. It fell back in hot red flames that spread to its comrades; though that barely deterred them, as decaying, immortal corpses.

He only looked at her briefly, “-We’re in the middle of a situation!” Before he turned away and handled another pair of creatures. One of them wore a red cloak.

“Of fucking course I noticed!”

Harper paused in her attempt at confrontation to whack an incoming cultist with a paperweight the size of her fist; when it staggered, she hit it again in the head before kicking it away and firing poisoned arrows at the wave behind it with a single-handed crossbow. She turned back to Soren with her newly borrowed time, “Did you know?!”

Soren was exasperated, “Did I know what?!!?”

“About all of these monsters!”

She didn’t hear him groan and sigh in annoyance, as the battlefield, the air around her, was made of pure, overshadowing noise; but she figured he did.

“Not to this magnitude!” He yelled back.

His former-student would have turned to ask him to clarify, but she had to focus on defending herself from the monsters coming after _her_  when a cultist ambushed and threw itself on her back, a long dagger in hand.

Besides, he probably wouldn’t have been honest with her, anyway.

* * *

**It went on and on  
** **Claiming a project as a great work  
** **Human parts that made up a new chimera  
** **They read the list of names of who they’re made of**

**\- The Making of a Chimera, Nessa/Yoppy/GHOST ft. Utatane Piko**

* * *

Lukas stumbled into the forest.

He set off a bomb, when he ran out of arrows and his sword was low and close to breaking. In a hurry, he’d kept it deep in his inventory, took out the TNT Axel had given all of them, and set it off. The creatures around him were destroyed, some were burnt by the blast, others were knocked back; he was too.

He was thrown into the woods.

From where he was, behind the ringing in his ears and making his head throb, he could feel, hear, the battles going on outside; it sounded so far away.

It made him think about Jesse.

He lay there in the forest, trying to breathe and praying that no creature comes in and forces his hand.

He was so tired. His muscles ached, his head hurt, his heart throbbed, chest tight.

“That couldn’t have been Jesse,” he insists to himself. In his head, he goes over the swift, blurry images that were his memories of just minutes prior, tries to rationalize something he couldn’t understand.

“Why would I think it isn’t Jesse?” He wonders briefly to himself, before he remembers that she spoke cryptically, wore a cultist’s robe, and plunged her entire arm into a tree and screamed.

(Was it a scream?)

He groaned. The noises in his memory were making everything fuzzy. Jesse, if that was really her, had made a noise, had done _something_ after she put her arm into the tree, after that loud, sickening crack. If it were a scream, Lukas felt torn, even more confused than earlier. It didn’t sound like a scream of pain, it didn’t sound like Jesse _losing_  anything; but at the same time, it wasn’t a scream of pleasure. He knew what that sounded like, and it wasn’t like that.

It wasn’t… evil.

(Jesse wasn’t evil.)

“Was she?”

Immediately, he felt disgust at himself for even considering the notion.

(She couldn’t be.)

“She isn’t. That can’t be her.”

(Could she?)

Lukas couldn’t care for the white, hot tears that seared his face; he choked back a sob as the sound of grass rustling alerted him awake.

A face that he mistakenly thought was Jesse flew at him to the sound of a deafening cry, a tongue out and predatory, aiming for her prey. It flew at him and pinned him to the ground.

Feathered, bat-like wings enveloped him as he blacked out.

* * *

“Cover me!”

Soren wasted no time in drawing a Flame II enchanted sword as Harper made quick work of the space littered with decaying matter. Surrounding the Old Builders were more waves of the creatures, less cloaked cultists now and more tailed caricatures of humans. The more of them that Soren encountered, the better he could get an idea of how they looked: long, stringy hair, oily and grimy; some sort of mermaid tail taking the place of legs, their hips moving unnaturally from side to side as they swam through the air.

They clawed and screamed, and the worst part was that there weren’t that many to begin with. He slashed at them, repeatedly, the same five that kept coming back for more, and no matter how many burning scars he’d left on them, they came back stronger, faster, _angrier_.

“Get out of the way!”

In that time, Harper had put together pistons and bombs over the faceless corpses of the creatures. Soren sped out of the way as the sirenas flew at her, their new target; who pushed one button and subsequently fell into a small chasm, immediately covering herself under obsidian as the ensuing explosion occurred.

Everything in the vicinity was blown back by the poisoned blast.

For the moment, air cleared.

* * *

Soren coughed violently as he struggled to get up, after being blown head-first into the dirt by the shockwaves of TNT. His ears were ringing painfully, his head throbbing; muscles aching, he groaned at the sharp stings that ran through him through a course of scars and bruises.

“Is everyone okay?” He heard Harper call from far behind, after the sound of an obsidian block breaking and somebody climbing out of course dirt. He could hear no-one else reply, which made him bolt through his pain in alarm.

“Ivor!” He gasped, “Where’s-”

But he fell back down with a cry of pain, his spine running with a sharp trill.

He could do nothing, in a daze, as he was picked up by large talons and carried away, into the Dead Zone’s dark sky.

Nobody acknowledged his screams.

* * *

**And now you ask me, “Do you want to run away?”  
** **My mind is racing, what am I supposed to say?  
** **“If nothing holds you here then you don’t have to stay.”  
** **I want to say “okay” - I’m ashamed, but I’m suddenly afraid**

**-Punch It, Punk!, Ferry ft. Yuzuki Yukari**

* * *

Ivor was scared.

He’d spent almost a hundred years alone after the break up. He’d had to defend himself, by himself, against mobs and griefers and the natural calamities that occurred around him. The Far Lands, especially, were dangerous; ever since he spawned he was enthusiastic about sprinkling in chaos and unconventional thinking into whatever he could, but there was always a logic to it that he could understand. Yet even if he could understand the logic behind the chaos of the Far Lands, that didn’t make it any less dangerous to him. How many times had he almost fallen and died? How many times had he narrowly survived a sudden flood where there was no water?

(...How many times had he wished he didn’t survive?)

Those hundred years, alone, with just his own logic and chaos was scary to him, in a way he didn’t know how to articulate. His world had just been reduced to himself, the immediate environment around him. Rarely did he ever invest too much effort or emotion into anybody else, not since the breakup.

(Not since Soren.)

But then he made the Witherstorm, and then he met Jesse, and his life took a direction he couldn’t quite catch up on; and he was scared because it felt like that new direction was circling back to where everything started.

Had he wanted to go back to the times when he was close with his friends? Of course. Had he wanted for things to never have changed? One hundred percent.

But not like this.

Not with losing Jesse to a chaos he couldn’t explain; not with needing to look for Soren and finding him in the room where everything fell apart-

Not like this.

The monsters that surrounded him earlier were the nail on the coffin.

Ivor didn’t understand why, but these creatures that he knew nothing about reminded him of himself; and that scared him.

They were weak and easy to take down, but they reminded him too much of the Far Lands, the chaotic logic that was a toxic danger to him every day. They wore cloths akin to the gowns worn by patients at a clinic, dotted and plain and stained with sickness. A weaved bag was worn over their heads, hiding their faces and muffling their agonized moans and wails. They ambled and limped like zombies, but their strength when they threw and shoved him along were akin to an iron golem’s.

He was hurt, understandably, in the battle that had ensued; and he was running out of resources. Only so many potions could be carried in the inventory and whatever added storage anybody brought along; it doesn’t take long to realize that potions don’t stack in 64s.

Ivor was scared because of so many things right now, to the point that it overwhelmed him.

He couldn’t understand how he’s still breathing despite it.

“Ivor, are you okay?” Harper asked him when she reached him. He lay on his side, on a mound of dirt and bones. His inventory was nothing now; only a half-cracked enchanted golden sword, two splah potions of slowness, and a potion of instant health remained. His shield had been destroyed in the battle and all his healing potions had been used up- and he survived to the tune of two-and-a-half hearts.

“No,” he groaned in reply. A hiss escaped him through clenched teeth as he tried and failed to get up.

“You’re hurt.”

“I know.”

He could feel Harper’s worried gaze before he even looked, a mere glance proving it to him; that signature frown of hers becoming deeper as she examined his wounds. He flinched violently when she touched the bruised area on his side, which he only now realized was torn open- when had that happened? Had the battle been that much of a confusing flurry he didn’t even catch himself getting hurt?

Faraway, he could hear Olivia grumble, annoyed. “Oh, what the hell.”

“What’s wrong?” He asked, unable to see as all he could were the colorless lumps of corpses that were the monsters taken down by Harper’s TNT blast.

“Everyone’s gone.”

“What?!”

Ivor forced himself up to look, despite the pain of his side that screamed at him not to; he’d fallen over with a gasp, but Harper helped him up, shushing him gently. He leaned on her side, breathless and dizzy as he looked around at the barren battlefield around them.

There was nothing to see.

There was _nobody_  to see.

It was just him and Harper and Olivia, who stood with an enchanted bow overlooking the bodies laying around them that blended with the dull brown ground made of dirt and debris they once stood on.

They were all gone from sight: Lukas, Petra, Axel, Soren- 

Ivor gasped, “Soren!” A pang in his chest as he let out heavy breaths coincidentally held his lungs with a vice grip as he said the name. He was still in a daze, his head and body still hurt from the onslaught that had just occurred, and his memory wasn’t the best, but he could have _sworn-_

“Did I hear him call me, or am I going mad?”

“He called for you,” Olivia replied without hesitation; she seemed distracted, “He seemed worried.”

Ivor audibly gasped and screeched, “The nerve!”

Harper let out a chuckle when he exclaimed that. A kiss was laid to the side of his head as she held him firm.

The younger engineer’s focus was elsewhere, though; a disinterested hum in response to Ivor’s quip was all she had bothered to give. Her focus, now, was on the forest nearby and the beaten road at the other side.

Ivor’s brows furrowed as he took in the scene himself, and realized the implications of Soren calling for him right before he was blasted to the mound, and his absence now.

“Where is he?” He asked nobody in a low voice. Harper squeezed his arm reassuringly, though he was brought no comfort.

“That’s what I’m wondering myself.”

Olivia turned, looking around and stepping in circles before eventually returning to her remaining peers.

“Those monsters must have taken them,” she said conclusively. “The aswang and the manananggal specifically.”

“The _what_?”

Olivia waved a hand, saying casually, “The ones that look like ravagers with no shells and the ladies with wings and no legs. Those things must have taken them.”

Harper raised a brow. “How do you know what they are?”

“I read,” was her only response. “Come on!”

Without warning, she tossed the remaining Old Builder sanitized bandages and calamansi, which she caught expertly, though still in surprise.

“We have to do _something_  if we want to find Jesse. The only place I can think to start that isn’t wandering through more wood is wherever that-” she pointed with her right hand, “road leads to.”

Her arms fall to her sides, then she picks them up and puts her hands on her hips, a brow raised at the injured doctor and the engineer. “Are you guys gonna come or not?”

A moment’s hesitation among them, before Harper turned to Ivor. She tilted her head, “Are you okay?”

Ivor bit his lip. “I can walk.”

The woman helped him stand, even as he was forced to lean into her and rely on her to walk without falling over. With little patience, Olivia watched then promptly turned away and walked for the road. The other two adults followed.

* * *

Axel stood at the shore of a lake.

It was polluted brown with muck and blood, tinted dirt green with a memory at the far back of his head, with no form or name. He wasn’t surprised to see it, he was in a swamp biome, after all. A dirty grey overlayed the environment around him, the trees chipping away, giving way to the vines that grew without prompt and cut through everything it met.

The shore at the other side was the opposite. It was a normal grassland, with high hills; strong, healthy trees; and bright, green grass. There was no litter. There was no dirt.

...It was just a shore. A shore opposite to the swamp, the only commonality being the lake, the waters decorated with lily pads.

High above, the sky flickered, undecided and confused.

Axel sympathized with it. Between the greens of poison and acid, and the bright white of a facade; decorated only by dark clouds, compact together looking like a skull and crossbones; it moved between them in a strobe.

The rain that fell was red with blood, dripping slowly, patiently; into the grass, unto the lily pads, into the lake.

Small ripples appeared in the footsteps of a stone that skipped on it rhythmically. Axel turned his head to the source.

“When you’re a child, everything makes sense once you apply your own logic to it,” the watcher said.

A young man around his age, who he recognized but couldn’t quite name, sat on the shore to his left. His green eyes were foggy and light, like a doll’s; his hair was a luscious brown, even as it were a mess that stuck out everywhere. The leather jacket he wore, the image of which glitched to him, contrasted his deathly pale skin in a way that scared Axel.

The cracks in his skin made him look like he was made of porcelain, ivory that was old and beaten and aged, passed through torture over and over and over again.

Far behind him, a girl of the exact same age lowered herself down a ladder, emerging from a treehouse that was falling apart. Waiting for her at the bottom, with the roots, was a pig and a man in a maroon jacket

"Some events can pass you by like nothing, but-"

The man clad in a leather jacket threw a larger stone up into the air and caught it back in his calloused palm, before he threw it carelessly, effortlessly, into the lake. It landed in the same place the first stone did, and it sunk into the lake, but the ripples it sent out were massive, causing waves that moved the lily pads and made swirling arrangements of the blood that mixed with the water.

Axel and the other boy watched it in silence.

"Some are hard to ignore,” he laments.

As they watched the ripples spread, the skull and crossbones above them wavered, the clouds spreading to blanket the sky to the tune of rumbling thunder. No lightning ever followed through, though; there was the music box-like rain, the growling thunder, but nothing else. The light dissipated. 

The larger stone, which was gone from sight, deep at the bottom of the seafloor, had left behind ripples that overshadowed whatever marks the previous stones had left behind. It continued to do so, even after the stone was already gone, large ripples forming at the spot where the stone had sunk, sending waves through the lake that progressively strengthened in force and size; disturbing the lily pads and reaching the shore.

The boy chuckled humorlessly.

“Some _can't_  be ignored."

For a reason he couldn’t decipher, Axel turned fully to the treehouse, where the man in the maroon jacket stood, facing away from him. The pig next to him snorted and nuzzled its head against his leg.

“And some you don’t even realize is there until it’s too late.”

There was a quaking of the earth beneath him, one that shook everything but the sea, which stayed as still and calm as the lake that was once there. A large rumbling followed suit, and turning to the direction of the sound, Axel gasped to see one of two volcanos quiver and tremble. Its shell was burning, a gradient of metallic heat taking over and passing through like the waves of the sea-

and it erupted.

Axel then realized that the clouds above were actually smoke, that the things that fell were ashes, and the reason for why the lake or sea was suddenly so still was because it had turned instantly into bedrock and obsidian.

“Everything is weak in this place,” the young man said as everything around them turned to stone. “Even God.”

…

…

  
………

He blacked out as a scream rang through his head, and the world around him shattered to pieces with him.

When he woke up, he finally remembered the name of the faraway memory. It all came back to him, the name of the place that he was in, the why, the where, the how; it all made sense to him.

The Dead Zone was called so for a reason.

* * *

“The last night he had with Jesse,” was a phrase Lukas refused to acknowledge.

She was- _is_ beautiful. No matter where, no matter when; the context didn’t matter, she was beautiful all throughout. Everything about her is beautiful.

He’s breathless, literally and figuratively, as he admires her underneath him. Her dark brown-

**familiar**

-hair was fanned beneath her, flattering her frame. Her half-lidded eyes-

_**like a perfect doll** _

-gleam up at him, along with her smile that made her face beam with an affectionate smile, aglow. The man can’t help himself as he leans in and kisses her passionately, feeling overwhelmed with something he couldn’t identify as he felt her lips with his. They breathe each other in and hold each other with all the strength they could muster, that they _could_ muster as both were out of breath; Jesse herself limp without even doing anything.

“I love you,” he tells her again, for the umpteenth time. A tearless sob breaks through curled lips, before she pulls him in for another kiss.

It was too much.

Just as soon as he could do anything about the pleasure that wrapped itself around him, though, he lost it to a clustered, claustrophobic cold.

An empty bedroom. An inventory full of his belongings. A bed that he used to share with-

His breath catches in his throat. Tears welled in his eyes. He feels faint, but he refuses to lie down in the bed, refuses to even look at the discarded ocelot patch that he threw in a garbage can, refuses to acknowledge the disgust that overwhelmed him as he wore the leather jacket.

It was _just_ a jacket.

(She’s just a Jesse.)

What was so important about it?

(What was so important about her?)

“SHUT UP!” Lukas hears before he realizes that it came out of his mouth, screaming at the words he couldn’t understand. The world around him trembled, but it did so silently, noiselessly.

He realized, then, that he was all alone.

Suddenly, the door opened, and the doll that come in and found him, when he did, stared at him; betrayed, confused, grief swirling in his eyes.

The man gasped, tears springing as he felt the air pulled out of his lungs. A sharp pain stung from his neck, but it felt like something _leaving_  him, not attacking him.

Very quickly, those feelings were overshadowed by guilt eating up at him from the inside.

“Lukas, wake up!”

In that instant, the world was taken over by white.

* * *

**And I bet you never knew**   
**That I could have regrets for all the things that**   
**make you see red**   
**but all I see is purple instead**

**-Purple, Mandopony (Andrew Stein)**

* * *

Lukas could barely comprehend the sight he woke up to.

There was Axel, staggering as he fought, swinging his axe without abandon towards the screaming entity, naked and filthy with blood and grime and decay. Its hair was stringy and obviously unkempt, yet it seemed to the dazed blond like it was beautiful and curled and would have rested nicely over her shoulders. Enormous, bat-like wings helped her fly, but they burned along with the rest of her, setting fire to the trees that she bumped into.

The part that caught Lukas completely off-guard, however, was the fact that she had no legs.

She was a flying _thing_ , a caricature of a bat and human hybrid. It had a monstrous tongue that stuck out of her mouth between full sets of fang-like teeth; her hands were like talons, sharp and black; and bloody intestines seemed to dangle outwards to where her torso stopped, hanging from her insides.

Lukas resisted the urge to vomit, feeling sick from head to toe.

At some point, Axel finally took it down, finishing her off with an axe between the eyes. The weapon had shattered over her dead body, falling into disguise with the embers and ashes from the fire she’d been turned into.

For awhile, nobody said anything, the only sound being Lukas’ and Axel’s heavy breaths.

“What the fuck was that?” Lukas asked, confused and terrified, out of his mind.

“I have no idea,” the griefer answered, “but I’m pretty sure it was sucking the blood out of your neck like a fucking vampire.”

He blinked and sputtered, “ _What??_ ”

Axel held out a hand, which Lukas graciously accepted, and the bigger man helped him stand up. Wobbly as he was, Lukas gasped, subconsciously gripping his hand as he tried to steady himself. He felt faint.

“Yeah,” Axel said sympathetically, “I felt the same when I woke up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I woke up to _that_ thing too,” he cocked his head to the creature, dead and now charred and burnt, “Got knocked out and had a crazy-ass dream.”

Lukas breathed heavily, eyes wide, feeling sunken and lightweight. “You too, huh?”

Axel blinked, “You had a dream too?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Weird.”

Nothing more was said. The boys stood there, breathing evenly, still trying to understand the events that have and are continuing to transpire around them.

“Where’s everyone else?” Lukas asked after he pushed the thought of his dream away. Axel shrugged.

“Beats me. I was alone somewhere over there,” Axel pointed at a vague direction behind Lukas, “when I woke up. I can’t hear anybody from there either.”

Lukas couldn’t either; the field where the battle had happened was completely void of life. With nothing but a soft “Damn,” under his breath, Lukas walked through the withering flora and twigs and roots to the now abandoned battlefield. Axel followed behind him. As they walked, they eventually came upon the oak tree that they first met Jesse under when they entered the Dead Zone.

“Holy shit,” Axel gasped.

The tree was dead, without a doubt. All the leaves it had, if it had any to begin with, were gone from the branches; together with the trunk, now barren and hollow. Its bark chipped away easily, falling apart little by little. The wood was weak, cracked, and withering. You could see it in the colors, too, if you squinted. The wood was now much darker, or perhaps just more dull; it was dry and rough to the touch, barely even making a scratch when Axel put a finger to a chipped shard of bark.

“What happened here?” Lukas wondered aloud. Axel gave him no answer.

They wandered separately around the battlefield for a while, trudging with heavy footsteps over the dead bodies laying around them, colorless and unidentifiable. Dirt and gunpowder and dust of things neither of them could identify covered everything, as if making a new layer of ground to stand on.

At some point, the pair came across an assortment of pistons and redstone, put together in a way that neither men could understand. One thing they did understand, though, was that whatever had happened in the battle while they were unconscious; this contraption had something to do with it.

“Looks like something of Olivia’s,” Lukas says, admiring the quick craftsmanship of the weapon.

Axel shook his head, “No, Liv’s not explosive- I mean, she _was_ , but-”

He trailed off. Lukas didn’t notice until the silence fell. “But what?”

(“That’s not her,” came unheard to the man, for Axel murmured it under his breath.)

When he walked to the other side of the cannon to look, he saw Axel staring away from the weapon, towards one of the two volcanoes that made up the Pneumonoultra valley. His brows furrowed, he frowned; he looked up at the griefer. “Axel?”

The man’s hand dropped limply from the canon.

“I have to go.”

Immediately, Lukas was stunned. “What do you mean-” he blinked, shaking his head, in utter disbelief, “What do you mean, ‘you have to go?!’ You’re just going to abandon Jesse?!”

“That’s not-”

Lukas stared at the taller man, struck by shock, surprise, horror. As far as he knew, Axel was one of Jesse’s oldest friends. They were so close to her, he was just upset as he was earlier, wasn’t he? They had to find her, how could he just leave her like that?

(I have to laugh. In his love for Jesse, he forgets his own betrayal of his friends.)

“...Axel.”

For what felt like several moments, tense silence took the air, making both men uncomfortable in a way that the Dead Zone’s normally poisonous atmosphere couldn’t have made them. Lukas’ fingers twitched, itching- itching for _something_ , but he had no idea what. To punch? To throw something? To tear his head off his scalp and scream?

“..Lukas,” Axel started, slowly. His voice was low, and his shadow seemed more defined to the blond he was alone with, “I think Jesse’s gone. I don’t think we can get her back anymore.”

Lukas stared at him, blinking; speechless, stunned.

“That’s bullshit,” he said through heavy breaths. “That’s bullshit- What the fuck?!”

“Luk-”

“ _What the fuck, Axel_?!”

His voice was loud, would have startled nearby birds if there were any; alerted nearby monsters to their location, if any were there to hear it or even want to find it. “I thought you were her friend!” He yelled, “Ax- Axel, what the fuck!”

The griefer sighed and shook his head, already stepping away from Lukas and the cannon. “I can’t keep doing this,” he said, “Jesse’s gone, we can’t get her back. I’m-”

Lukas didn’t notice nor care about the tears that welled at the corners of Axel’s eyes, didn’t hear how he had to choke back sobs at the revelation that he’d lost both of his friends and didn’t even realize it until it was too late.

“I’m sorry.”

But who was he apologizing to? To Lukas? To Jesse? To Olivia? To himself?

He said it a strangled whisper, unheard by Lukas, the only other person left in the battlefield; and he ran. Axel turned and ran, visibly going straight for the right volcano, struggling to fight tears threatening to erupt from him, clutching his lungs with an iron grip and making him sob and choke as he ran.

“Fine!” Lukas yelled, “Fuck off, then!”

But he’d already ran away from the remnants of a life long gone.

The Wither Storm, Axel realized bitterly, truly was the end of the Order of the Pig.

* * *

**Yeah, forever, please, boys, don’t cry**   
**‘Til we meet again, I’m afraid it’s bye-bye-bye**   
**Whatever you remember, tell me**   
**Even if it was just a feverish, weird dream**

**-UmbraticForest, Sand Planet by HACHI ft. Hatsune Miku**

* * *

Petra, in contrast, was in denial.

She never was a creative kind of person, not in an artistic way, at least. She didn’t write, didn’t draw, didn’t sing; nothing like that. She liked spending her time amplifying other skills, like making nearly impossible leaps from one edge to the next, master any weapon she could get her hands on; daresay, she spent her time getting creative with her surroundings offensively than she did artistically.

But this?

This hyper-realistic image of her in a beautifully atmospheric cave, pickaxe in hand with a torch in the off-hand, finding diamonds, joking with Jesse and laughing together, going on adventures together? It was amazing. Denial, ignorance, delusions- she was a master at them.

Perhaps I’m speaking from a hypocritical standpoint, but it’s a marvel to behold, what the unconscious human mind can make up from just the formless seeds of emotion and conflict planted inside.

No matter what anyone might say, I think dreams are just something science can never truly explain.

Petra imagines herself going on adventures, as she always did. She’d used trades as her excuse to go places people normally shouldn’t, to tie herself to dangerous people, to put herself at risk 24/7.

She loved the thrill of it.

The thing is, always being on her toes, like this, never really sitting down or staying long around the same people; she never got a chance to do anything about the non stop thrill of emotions.

It was always physical battles with swords and mobs and old ruins crumbling apart and lava, all those silly, fantastical risks that she liked to indulge herself in; not the mental throes, not the leaps she’d have to take from one emotional conflict to the next, not juggling different thoughts and stimuli with her head.

That’s where her creativity stopped, yet simultaneously came to life.

“Petra!” She hears Jesse call from further in the cave, “Look what I found!”

The only feeling she liked was the sparks in her head and chest as she went on adventures, found loot, all that; but it felt even better when she had somebody she actually liked and trusted there with her.

(Having someone she could trust with her life was a faraway dream she’d had ever since she spawned.)

Jesse had found a red crystal or jewel, framed with gold, with a long, round chain acting as some sort of necklace. It wasn’t very big, the size of a thumb nail at most, but it was beautiful; and it glimmered brightly in the cave’s soft lights.

“What is that?” Petra wondered aloud as she admired it in Jesse’s hand. The other girl shrugged.

“I dunno, but it’s hella pretty,” Jesse said with a grin. Petra could hear it in her voice, and it made her grin widely as well. “I’m keeping it!”

The girl clad in red armor tucked it safely in her inventory, deep where she wouldn’t lose it.

“Petra-”

She couldn’t find the source of the voice. It echoed all around her, resonating in the cave’s walls and bouncing through the dew and the gravel.

“Petra, wake up.”

When she turned, the jewel lay on the floor, suddenly abandoned and dropped. The tiles beneath her were cracked and old, and the ruins she stood in were falling apart,

All of it because of the-

What was it she was standing in front of?

...It? Wasn’t it a she? Wasn’t Jesse right here with her?

(Her bed.)

Petra stared at the pod that was in shambles, broken apart and crushed by debris.

(Her crib.)

“Petra!”

Was that Lukas calling her? It ought to be, right?

She left the room and followed the shadow of Lukas to the backdoor of the Temple, where she prepared to meet Jesse again.

“Petra, wake up!”

* * *

This wasn’t the Old Order’s temple, but a church to a nondescript God.

Though she thought a jolt ran through her, it was nothing more than another illusion of her head. She woke up slowly with a groan, an aching tormenting her entire body, making her head throb and chest tighten. Her neck, in particular, was painful, a particular spot feeling like she’d been stabbed through with a thin blade.

“You’re awake.”

Petra, through a grimace, looked up and around to see Soren kneeling with her. “You were still asleep when they finally left us alone.”

Her eyes narrowed. “‘They?’”

Soren gestured around them. She followed his hand to see several women- no, long haired entities surround them, stationed at different points in the Church. They all wore torn clothes, ripped and shredded and barely covering their naked, monstrous bodies.

Petra inhaled sharply when she recognized some of them as competitors from the Old Builder’s games, the signature stripes of white and bright colors of their uniforms stood out to her even in the dim lighting of the church.

“What the hell…?”

Horror sunk into her with realization, a deep, nauseating pit in her stomach as she looked on at the monsters around them; human no longer, as bat-like wings were spread behind them, tongues dripping blood and acid flicking in the air, their graying skin coagulating, their hands now dark talons poisoned with wither.

They were the missing people. The groups of sixteen that had disappeared from every world in the Portal Network; they were the monsters from earlier, that surrounded them and overwhelmed them outside.

Petra trembled where she sat, staring with wide eyes, gaping. “ _What the hell_???”

“Stop looking at them,” Soren instructed in a low voice. One of the monsters made repeating clicking noises at the back of its throat, tilting its head as it watched the two spawns in the center of the church.

The trader looked to the old man, “Where are we?” She asked in a whisper, hoping for but receiving no answer. Desperation and horror laced her voice. “What the hell is going on?!”

Soren looked away, biting his lip and trembling himself, his hands shaking even when in tight, bleeding fists.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“That’s alright!”

The voice startled both redheads as it echoed within the walls of the church. A loud crack followed a rumble that shook the floor beneath them. The monsters began to cackle as they spread their wings and flew to the roof of the church, crumbling to pieces gradually, bigger and bigger debris falling with every tremor of the earth.

Petra, very quickly, realized that the voice was a distorted remix of Jesse’s.

“You’ll find out soon enough!”

Neither Petra nor Soren could recognize their own screams as the floor crumbled gave way beneath them, and they fell with the debris to the darkness below.


	5. Prisoner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iiiiiiiii hate this chapter so much. so difficult to write. came out so bad.  
> whatever, im most satisfied with this ig
> 
> warning it's super fckin long, i recommend a break or sittin with some snacks or something
> 
> sorry haha
> 
>  **January 13, 2020 edit;;** updated a few details and lines

(“Jesse” had leveled the Church into the ground.)

The sweltering heat around the volcano suffocates Axel.

(“Jesse,” whoever that really was, had been planning this for a very long time.)

Several times, he was tempted to shed his armor and jacket as he climbed the mountain, but he pushed through. Despite how his palms started to bleed, despite how the molten soul sand scratched him open and drew blood out of him with every step; he continued. Even when he could barely breathe, even when he felt faint.

(It built up over ages, years and years of learning, centuries of enduring the pain, realizing what “she” could utilize; transforming it and making it a part of “her” soul.)

He had no idea how much time it had taken him to get to the foot of the volcano and climb, but at some point he reached a sort of plateau. In front of him, a few feet away, was an arched entryway to the inside of the volcano.

(She- It- They- _He_.)

The griefer nearly collapsed to his aching limbs when he reached that surface, but at the same time, standing here in the glow of the entrance, he felt revitalized. If not wholly, perhaps just enough to do _something_. He felt his hearts restored, his hunger disappear, and his motivation rekindled.

For one last time.

“I’m sorry, Jesse,” he says to the ashen air in a breath.

(This was all part of a plan that none of them could escape.

All of it, a revenge plot that none of them could win.)

Axel ambled to the arch, exhausted beyond belief, walking over the bubbling lava through the obsidian bridge.

* * *

 

**Prisoner; noun**   
**a person captured and kept confined by an enemy or criminal**

 

* * *

 

**“There’s something else you should know. There was a third Admin, named Fred.”**

**“Where is he?”**

**“Dead. He and I fought Romeo for control over the world. We lost.”**

 

* * *

 

Soft, foggy hues of blues and purples were the first thing Petra understood.

She fell to the ground with a grunt and a yelp, her back becoming numb with the pain and the ache from earlier. Tall, metal boxes blinking lights and glowing with echoing hum surrounded her and Soren, forming some sort of maze tangled in wires and cords. The trader got up swiftly, despite her body begging her not to; and she stood back to back with Soren, who’d brandished an enchanted bow. Carefully, Petra took out her last remaining weapon, Miss Butter.

“You two are so foolish,” Jesse, the cult leader clad in white, slurred with false pity. “Don’t you realize where we are?”

Its eyes flickered to Soren, a glare hardening with its brightened, red eyes that joined a deep scowl. “Do you, Soren?”

“The Dead Zone,” Soren growled, “What about it?”

The man in question returned the glare he couldn’t see. If Petra had time to think, she’d have realized that he was completely different from before. No longer was he a bumbling old kook who didn’t know his right from left; he wasn’t tripping over his words or worrying intensely of what his colleagues thought of him. No, in fact, he was more like Hadrian, his presence and actions leaving a bitter taste in one’s mouth; a man whose decisions in the past he’d chosen callously, with little regard for anybody affected.

He didn’t know what had gotten into Jesse, but he had no liking for it

“You had to have noticed that you haven’t died yet, right?” The watcher in white giggled. Their red eyes glinted a pale, foggy hue, blending with the lights of the control room. “Not even _you_  can survive the toxic air of this place.”

Petra wouldn’t dare admit to it, but she was terrified. She trembled where she stood, her weapon shaking in her hand as her eyes darted all over the place, to the darkness in between the soft hues of light that only served to scare her more.

She had no idea where the voice was coming from.

“You had to have realized at this point,” Jesse continued. “Soren, none of your stupid little science can do what I just did to this place. Taking out the poisoned code? Absorbing it?”

It chuckled, “Sure, your silly little doll was the thing that absorbed it, but she wouldn't have even been able to _do_ it without me. Without me-”

A series of explosions surrounded them one after the other, blowing bits and pieces of burning metal everywhere, scarring the two humans. Soren in particular grunted at the added wounds he gained. They were at the back of his mind, right now, as he struggled to process the words Jesse had said.

“Your silly little doll,” it couldn’t be…?

As the air cleared, ‘Jesse’ emerged from the rubble, her white cloak still pristine and clean, glowing a heavenly light in the dark basement.

She smiled, and her teeth shone.

“All of you would be dead.”

Soren stared in horror as a sharp blade emerged from her hand, unsheathing with a sting of a noise that pierced the air.

* * *

Ivor, injured and relying on Harper to hold him up and help him walk, grimaced with every step he took; every twist, every turn they had to make. A noise through grit teeth escaped him as he tripped over loose rubble. “Are you okay?” Harper immediately attended to him, concerned eyes looking at him as she held him up in her arms, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” he gasped, “I’m fine.”

“That wound better be sealed up and bandaged,” Olivia quipped from afar. She looked to the pair from the corner of her eye, “And bandaged well, too. Are you sure you don’t want to use that Instant Healing potion you got there?”

“Only when I really need it.”

Harper frowned. “Ivor, you’re down to two hearts.”

The man avoided her gaze.

“I’ll be fine.”

Olivia rolled her eyes hearing the blatant lies, but didn’t comment any further.

“What happened here?”

They found themselves at dilapidated gates, wrapped in overgrown foliage and crumbling to pieces. Its gates were severely rusted over and hanging off the hinges, dangerously close to falling to the ground. There was a sign at the top of the arch. “‘Barangay Lisanin,’” Olivia read aloud.

“Oh,” Harper frowned as she squinted up at the sign. “Is that what it says?”

“It’s hard to see,” Ivor commented. Maybe it was just his terrible vision telling him that the letters were arranged differently.

The trio walked through the gates, following the road to come upon a town plaza. What looked like a fountain stood in the middle, and it was surrounded by small buildings left in disrepair. Several market stalls and carts littered the plaza, fallen over and spilling rotten food all over the tiled ground.

Long black locks of lustrous hair flowed elegantly through the muck and dirt, which Olivia traced to the fountain, to the head of hair of a girl in a bright, white dress. She sat there, on the fountain, curled up and crying.

“Hello? Are you okay?”

She turned her head to see a girl with vibrant red hair approach slowly, a hand reached out cautiously. Her voice was fuzzy through the static surrounding her.

“Can I help you?”

When the girl got close enough, they stared at each other, green eyes meeting the other for a brief moment.

“It’s alright,” the redhead said, “I won’t hurt you.”

Without another second to hesitate, the girl in white reacted immediately, sprinting away and into the foggy darkness at the border of the town.

“Hey!”

The girl left behind ran after her, calling uselessly, and they faded into the distance, the noise they made gone with them.

“Olivia?” Harper called after her. The ripples seemed to reverse as the haze was punctured by the distraction. “Is everything alright?”

The engineer stood motionless, her gaze lost in the void where the girls used to be. Under her breath, in a murmur, “Everything’s peachy.”

* * *

News of Jesse’s disappearance reached Gretchen while he was supervising preparations for the incoming storm.

His subordinate called for him from the other side of the warehouse, “Sir!”

The man sighed, exhausted, but he weaved through the barrels of supplies anyhow, reaching his assistant at the entrance.

“What is it?”

The young spawn in purple pointed at a villager he just now noticed stood at the bottom of the steps, by the boats kept at a currently-dry dock.

“He insisted on coming to you, sir,” she said, sounding rather annoyed (Gretchen had missed the slight smirk to her voice, barely visible on her face). “He has news on Beacontown.”

His brows furrowed. He frowned and turned to look at the villager at the steps, “About Beacontown?” He rushed down to meet him, a million thoughts and questions running through his head. “What is it?” The leader asked.

Thunder roared in the distance. Lightning joined it and cackled as the villager informed him of the Order of the Stone’s absence and Jesse’s disappearance.

* * *

 

**“It’s so much easier for a legend to stay nice and shiny when it’s a fond memory… Easier to control it.”**

 

* * *

**But who said anything about a bad memory?**

All the city leaders were summoned to a hill just outside the temple of the first Order of the Stone, by a letter each received in the mail. Arriving at the hill, right as the flood began to truly form and rise above the shores, they all met at the foot of an aging treehouse; barely with a roof and certainly overgrown with vines and flowers, but it was still there, completely intact.

The letter instructed them, clearly, to climb the treehouse and hold the next Civil Union meeting there, in a circle around a single extinguished block of netherrack. They were told to sit at their respective seats, labelled accordingly.

But upon arrival, none of them followed.

No one really exchanged words. There was no discussion, no banter; perhaps their excuse was that the storm was too loud for any of them to hear past their thoughts. Whatever excuse they came up with by themselves, the only interactions were wary glances at one another, trying to figure out who sent the letters, who’s going to do what. What was the sender planning? Why this treehouse? Who built it? Why the Nether Portal at the lake?

“What are we doing here?” Gomez wondered aloud, finally breaking the tense silence. Despite the noise of the falling rain, it was evident to the other leaders present that she was bitter and annoyed at having to come all the way out here, right at the region where the storm was strongest.

Twelve of twenty of the Union were here, villagers and humans alike. Gomez herself would have skipped whatever meeting a mysterious, anonymous letter demanded of her, but a gut feeling told her to follow. A strong pull, an urge loud and clear in her heart, never relenting until she listened and got up.

Perhaps it was a need to know and be there for everything, as the oldest and most experienced human leader of the Civil Union. After her most trusted subordinate Ivor created a monster that destroyed and swallowed her city, then proceeded to eat up the entire world, she felt the need to attend to everything personally and keep an eye on anything and everything. To keep another Ivor from acting out ever again.

(The talk among her newer subordinates of her being too controlling hadn’t slipped by her.)

Perhaps it was Jesse’s behavior in yesterday’s meeting. Her repeated rebellion and disapproval of their actions and decisions was already normal routine for the adults, but yesterday was different. Bloodcurling screams cursing their name and the little girl storming out of the meeting room, leaving wordlessly with her former assistant; she tried to deny it, but it’s been a nagging presence at the back of her mind.

Gomez rolled her eyes at the thought. She wasn’t very fond of the idea of getting anywhere close to sympathizing for the girl.

Jesse was annoying and stupid. If it wasn’t for the fact that she basically single handedly took out the Eldritch abomination that very nearly destroyed their entire world, Gomez wouldn’t have given her another glance. That was a feat one couldn’t just look at once and brush off lightly.

(If only she wasn’t so…

...

The word escaped her.)

A figure came up the side of the hill. They were a mere shadow to her under the dark sky, but the closer they came, she could make out the silhouette of a particularly tall man.

“Gretchen!” One of the others called. The man finally joined them, gasping for breath as he rested on his knees. “I came as fast as I could,” he panted. He looked between the other members, noting the absence of his town’s nearest neighbor next to Jesse, the villager Aristotle. “What the hell is going on?”

Gomez sighed as she held her chin over her crossed arms, the contents of the note in her inventory coming back to her. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Apparently, nobody else among us sent those notes, which I’m assuming is the reason for why you came here?”

“Partially,” he breathed. Gretchen’s face scrunched from exhaustion, though his mind was running crazy with thoughts and theories. He finally straightened as much as he could while trying to regain his composure and be professional around his colleagues. “I’m also here because of Jesse.”

“Yeah, speaking of the runt,” a villager among them piped up, his thick accent noticeable even in the raging winds. “Where in Admin’s name is she?”

Gretchen sighed, resisting the urge to shut his tired eyes. He shook his head despairingly, “She’s gone.”

“ _What!?_ ” the leaders collectively gasped. Gone? Gone where? How? Why? Gomez fumed, _Was she abandoning responsibilities?_

“She can’t come,” he continued. He didn’t flinch from the shocked reactions of the other leaders, the anger and confusion that radiated from them, Gomez in particular, spiking suddenly. “She’s gone, she’s missing. Nobody knows why or who took her. They said a bloody writing was on the wall of her room, and the New Order left to find her.”

He gasped for breath after the words flowed out of him and shut his eyes. Gretchen was trembling all over, shivering, but he was beginning to doubt whether it really was the cold of the rain doing that to him or the disappearance of Jesse.

It was an unspoken truth, hidden by pride, that upon hearing this news, the missing persons cases that they collectively lumped unto Jesse for investigation so long ago was the first thing that came to mind.

(Was that case the reason why she disappeared? Had she become another victim?)

None of them asked, too full of themselves to bother doing so.

Before anybody would say anything or react, Aristotle’s name was called as one of them saw him coming up the hill. A formal greeting was forgotten when they all turned to look, and saw that his face was written over with horror and fear, clouding his lost, unfocused eyes as he walked to the group.

“Aristotle,” the human leader started. She eyed him suspiciously, lips pursed and glare narrow. “Did something happen?”

“We’re being watched,” he simply said. The villager was shell shocked where he stood, his fingers trembling and his breathing ragged.

Still in disbelief, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he said slowly. “Don’t attack it. Don’t scream at it.”

He inhaled sharply as his eyes darted around, terrified, looking everywhere but up. “Don’t. Do. Anything.”

Slowly, Gomez’ gaze left the villager and went to the environment around them. The sparse trees and the Nether Portal at the small pool, the treehouse above them and-

She couldn’t hide the gasp that escaped her.

Bright red eyes stared back. The mouth of the creature snarled impatiently at the group as all of them looked up and laid eyes on the inhuman figure peering over the edge of the treehouse.

_**follow instructions.** _

Gomez felt herself stiffen in genuine fear before she even knew she did. The terror washed over her, like a wave in the storm as she took in the features of the creature above.

For a blinding darkness that enveloped them and confined them to the treehouse, she could somehow clearly see the creature from where she stood. Its decaying, grey skin was tearing off its bones, dangling from its face along with its stringy, unkempt hair; wild and tangled and pointing in every direction. Its bangs near-completely covered the flickering lights that were its eyes.

But that’s all it was. A metaphor. A description.

Its red specks for eyes stared unblinking.

“It followed me here,” Aristotle said shakily, “I don’t know how, I was getting here by boat. I just knew it was following me.”

The creature’s head tilted unnaturally to the side, leaving a thin trail of light as its eyes moved with it.

Gomez licked her suddenly dry lips, nervous and legitimately terrified. “We should get up there.”

Everybody else was just as unnerved, far too unnerved, to question her sudden obedience of the notes out loud.

(Even as all of the leaders present were the most brutal, the most straightforward and haughty and proud to let something like a 29-year old spawn scare them. The skeletal version that watched achieved the fear they all should have felt before.)

One by one, they all climbed up the ladder, up to the old treehouse above. The creature disappeared from view as they did. Gretchen watched it as everybody else filed in, following in herself and climbing up, struggling to hold on to the rungs wet with rain. Fear coursed through her, the same kind that ran with confusion when she first laid eyes on the Witherstorm.

Once she made it to the top, she immediately identified her seat, lit up by a lantern sitting on the block of netherrack. She walked over, slowly and steadily, and sat on crossed legs.

She was startled to see that, when she turned to it, the creature was already staring at her. The creature, in tattered, tortured clothing, made garbled noises at the back of its throat as it circled the group.

Very soon, all present leaders, all the ones that bothered to listen to the letter or came because they could, were sat at their seats. The empty ones were just that; empty, blank, void of a leader because the leader couldn’t leave their people behind.

All but one.

They found a note at Jesse’s seat.

It was the empty space the creature put itself behind, crouched on all fours while its skull grinned madly at the terrified adults around it. It seemed triumphant, proud, in that position. None of them knew that it was hurting, that it was in pain as the monster it was now, but it was still standing. Breathing artificial air, powered by an artificial heart.

Even if it was walking decay, it continued forward, too determined to give up in helpless death.

The leaders held the note to the lantern. They would have read it, except it was written in some other language. Instead of the alphanumerics they were used to, they could only see symbols and glyphs printed on the note, the penmanship messy yet professional.

The only words they could understand were at the top, which read, “To the Civil Union; the Old Builders; the Old Order; the Admins. The men with the egos.”

None of the Union members said a word, too stunned or confused to articulate any of the thoughts or emotions running through their heads,

The creature sounded almost like it _giggled_ , as it adjusted itself in its dislocated, inhumane position.

_**follow instructions.** _

Lightning flashed, sending the sky into flames.

* * *

 

**The flower-like memories**   
**And even the mud-like traumas**   
**They continue to turn and melt**   
**All of it inside of me**

**\- mothy ft. Kagamine Rin ; Clockwork Lullaby**

 

* * *

Lukas sprinted, ignoring the humid wind cutting through him as he pushed himself to run down the old road. His run had slowed to a light jog as exhaustion slowly took hold of him, and very soon he stopped at an arch. By the vines that grew all over the gate, the broken cement that was crumbling with cracks all over and falling to pieces, it didn’t seem to have been lived in in a very long time. A carved sign was at the top of the gates, aligning with the arch in form and decay.

“Barangay Lason,” the broken words read.

Lukas wondered, as he shuffled through the gap between the rusted bars, if anybody actually lived here, if this was a real town. Were the monsters they fought earlier the former residents?

Who knew.

He walked for a short while, following the road until he came upon a plaza. It was completely ransacked and ruined, casting shadows in every direction from light sources he couldn’t find, darkening the debris and fallen-over structures that littered the place.

To his relief, it didn’t take long for him to find the others, catching them as he turned past the broken down fountain, past the fallen stalls and houses; Oliva, Harper, and Ivor.

“Guys!” He called out to them as he ran over. Ivor yelped when he called, though Olivia had no obvious reaction. The former and Harper were sat on a large piece of rubble when he came, the doctor’s robes unbuttoned to show his bruised and scarred skin, with Harper tending to large, red gashes on his side. Lukas winced when he saw the injuries.

“What kept you?” Olivia asked of him, more curious than bothered or relieved. Lukas’ face fell as the memory of earlier came back, and he frowned, looking away.

“I got caught by one of the-...”

The blond trailed off when his focus and sight landed on the crumpled legs on the ground beside Olivia, who he just now realized held a small pouch. The legs, to his shock and horror, were severed, lacking an upper body. Blood oozed out of the top, the disconnection where the torso was supposed to be. If Lukas squinted, he could see the hipbone sticking out of peeling skin.

He grimaced and backed away in audible disgust.

“Oh,” Olivia glanced briefly at the severed set of legs, “Don’t mind that. We just found these and sprinkled it with salt. Whatever manananggal owned this pair of legs is long gone now.”

“Manana _what_?”

“Mana _nanggal_ ,” the engineer corrected. “The creatures with the tongues and no legs? Those things. You can kill them by sprinkling salt in the legs they left behind.”

Lukas blinked as he squinted, perplexed. “That’s what they’re called? Wait,” he shook his head, “How do you know this?”

“Because I actually read,” Olivia shot in a deadpan tone, rolling her eyes. She leaned on one leg as she crossed her arms and tilted her head up, looking down on him. “So where’ve _you_ been?”

“I- I was caught by one of those manana- manananggal things,” he sputtered. “A-Axel killed it.”

“Where is he?” Ivor piped from where he sat. His wound was now mostly bandaged, and a potion bottle sat empty in his hand. Harper was keeping everything in his satchel.

Lukas bit his lip, resisting the urge to look away.

“He left.”

Olivia frowned. “He left?”

The man shrugged and held the nape of his neck. “He just- he said that this is a hopeless situation and that we can’t get Jesse back anymore-”

Harper and Ivor exchanged worried looks.

“-So he left.”

Olivia hummed, looking away momentarily in thought. Her brows were furrowed as she looked down, eyes narrowed.

“No.”

The other three blinked at her.

“No,” she said with some sort of finality, “I’m gonna need more before I abandon this myself.”

‘Thank you!’ Lukas shouted in his head. He sighed in relief.

“We should get going, see what we can find here,” she continued, taking a more leader-esque role than Lukas was used to seeing her. She looked to the older two members of the group, “Are you guys done?”

Harper nodded as she stood, holding Ivor’s hand and pulling him up. He didn’t grunt or wince. “Yeah, we can go.”

Olivia nodded, confirming with one look with Lukas before she turned to the road ahead.

“Then let’s.” 

* * *

 

**“Well, if I know one thing, it is definitely NOT the Admin. He [Nurm] won’t listen to me anymore!”**

**“Why are you being so fight-y, Jack? Come on!”**

**“Because I refuse to believe that there’s some all-powerful dude running around, playing games with my life!”**

 

* * *

The more Ivor looked at the town around them, the more the empty houses unnerved him. The more it seemed like the town was never even lived in in the first place. Sure, there were houses and small businesses, but there were no belongings left behind. No money, no clothes, or books or toys or photos. Nothing. Just.. nothing. They weren’t just empty of inhabitants, they were empty of _life_. Hollow, almost meaningless.

This wasn’t like how he saw Crown Mesa when he was first there; Crown Mesa looked abandoned, like somebody was supposed to be living there and nobody was anymore. This place was nothing like that. No, it was as if the whole town was just a prop or a set, some copy of a civilization that was never really there to begin with. 

Like it was made for decoration, a distraction for them to get through before the main point.

He instinctively inched closer to Harper, holding her sleeve tight in his grip. Harper, without looking or stopping, moved her arm and held his hand, squeezing reassuringly. 

“Am I more unnerved than I should be?” He asked in a whisper. Harper took in a shaky breath as she glanced around, seeing the same things he did- if not worse. Leaning in close to murmur, “I think you have every right to be scared of this place.”

Ivor bit his lip, unsure.

The other two members with them, the much younger Lukas and Olivia, were more composed than he was. If they were scared in any way at all, they didn’t show it.

“Oh, I think we’re leaving the middle class section of the place,” the blond noted, “Look!” He pointed at the houses that surrounded them and the suburb they were approaching, the rusted gates, the large driveways. “I think this is the upper class.”

Harper frowned. “This looks nothing like how a usual town would look like.”

“This wouldn’t be the usual place to live in,” Ivor muttered.

“Do you think we’d find anything if we searched these houses?”

Lukas seemed to think about his own question as he looked around, but the train of thought stopped when Olivia pointed at the open door of one of the gateless houses. “No, look.”

There were no lights to see clearly in the dark, but squinting through, the shape of the zombies with bags over their heads stood lifelessly at the door. Its arms were limp at its side, slouching, swaying lightly in the gentle breeze (‘gentle,’ for lack of a better word); and though its face wasn’t visible, it seemed to be staring in the direction of the group.

Ivor paled as he registered the monster’s presence, and the presence of the other creatures from before, especially that of the eyeless beast that walked down the left road, slowly approaching the group, growling.

“Okay,” Lukas backed away, hiding behind Olivia, who didn’t seem to be affected at all. If anything, her slouch was more indicative of annoyance. “Maybe not. No searching here tonight. Maybe they don’t want us to.”

Ivor felt Harper tug at his hand. He turned in her direction, seeing her point to the right road, which seemed to lead to another fork. “We could go through there. There seems to be less houses at that side. A middle class, an upper class,” she turned to the rest, “There might be a poorer district up ahead.”

“More monsters too?”

The engineer Lukas hid behind shoved past him, “Whatever’s there, we gotta come across something. Come on.”

Olivia led the way before anybody else could get another word in. Cowardly as it might have been, Ivor was fine with that if it meant they could avoid another battle with those monsters.

They continued through, and the assumption seemed to work as no monsters approached them. The more they walked, the more houses started to disappear until they got to the fork in the road, past a large, metal archway. At the fork, they were met with two options: the left, which led uphill; or the right, which seemed to go to a Church.

A very frightening, very foreboding church.

“I don’t know why,” Ivor mumbled quickly, “But I don’t want to get anywhere near that church.”

Olivia snickered as she turned to the left. “Just watch- we’ll have to get back there later because of something important.”

“Please no,” the writer of the group whined in a shudder. “What if Jesse’s there? Shouldn’t we get her back right now?”

Olivia turned to him, brows furrowed in disbelief. “Didn’t you see what she did earlier? She put her arm in that tree and absorbed all the poison in the atmosphere, how do you think we’re all not suffocating right now? Remember what Soren said, we’d all die here because of the negative code.”

The other three, the only three, members of the Order were taken aback at her raised voice, the only loud noise they all heard in a long while since the battle earlier. Olivia didn’t seem to realize or care. Her glare towards Lukas was hard and dark.

“Who’s to say she isn’t dangerous right now, with all that poison inside her? We don’t know where Soren or Petra are, and frankly I think going to where the monster we know nothing about will kill us faster than they could kill Jesse-”

She stopped herself with pursed lips and looked away, closing her eyes shut. She sighed heavily. Her fists clenched and unclenched, knuckles white.

“Olivia?”

“I don’t want to lose Jesse,” she said in a low voice, “but going in not knowing anything won’t help her, or us.”

Harper glanced back at the church, holding Ivor’s hand firm and hard, as her gaze landed on the shadows and silhouettes of the monsters. The manananggal and the mermaid-like creatures that flew around the church; the horned, eyeless beasts that climbed all over the walls; the hospital-gowned zombies that lingered at the entrance and road leading to the church.

The Old Builder felt a pit in her stomach.

Had those monsters been there earlier? Was it just too dark?

“It’s alright. You’re- you’re right anyway.” Lukas sighed deeply, struggling to surrender to her point, “I know. I want to help Jesse and get her back too.”

A silence took over. Harper felt eyes on the back of her head. When she turned, she saw Ivor, looking at her with fear and worry in his eyes. She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“We should get going,” Olivia said conclusively. “If we don’t find anything in that poorer district, then we can-” she grumbled and turned away fully, as if she didn’t want to say what she was going to, “then we can go check out the Church.”

Lukas nodded, “Okay.”

(Olivia rolled her eyes.)

The group climbed uphill, not taking long to pass by fields of rice. The stalks still stood tall, but they supposed that the crops were just like the trees of the forest: existing, but not actually edible. Ivor wondered if they were fake, just like the rest of town. The homes they passed by, if they were homes at all, were small and defenseless, hollow and void.

Not a monster inhabited a single house.

“These might be safe,” Lukas noted to no-one. 

Entering each house, they found them as empty as an abandoned village, cobwebs everywhere, covering empty chests and residing there alongside dust and dirt. Like every house before, there was no light, not a lantern or torch in sight. The darkness from before reached even the rising hill, covering everything beyond the rice fields and the backs of the houses.

That all changed the moment Harper opened the sixteenth door.

Lukas paled. “What the hell…?”

The sixteenth house they came upon, at the bottom of broken stone stairs, was the only place with light. A single lantern hung from the ceiling of the small room, which was all that the house was composed of, and was somehow completely lit up by the single lantern; making visible what scared the group the moment they took the scene in.

A long, splintered table, covered in dirty red markings, with a glowing Command Block right underneath it.

Ivor cursed under his breath, “What in the name of-?!”

“How-?!”

They trickled into the room, staring in bewildered horror at what occupied the house. “What is this??” A chill ran up Lukas’ spine as he registered the presence of the Command Block. “What is going on?!”

(“Whoever’s orchestrating all this seems to know what they’re doing,” Olivia mumbled, unheard to the others. “And that’s not Jesse.”)

“Are these religious symbols?” Harper wondered as her fingers traced the runes scrawled all over the wood. “Perhaps an obscure villager following?”

She’d been to and studied several other worlds in her time, as a researcher and a student back when she was younger. As far as she knew, she knew every villager language there was; but that didn’t completely rule out things she didn’t know.

Olivia was staring just as intently on the markings as well, but she shook her head and looked away in thought. “No, that’s not it. This isn’t any sort of villager language, they all share something similar. This doesn’t look anything like that at all.”

“Then what could it be?” Ivor wondered. 

Olivia hummed, but gave no answer.

“Wait-” He blinked, and looked up at the two programmers, “What about the symbols from the Atlas? Don’t these look something like them?”

“Maybe?” The Old Builder shrugged, “I wasn’t part of the creation of the Atlas. Everything I know is just from what I’ve heard.”

(Ivor frowned. With nothing else to look at from here, he crouched down and looked below the table, at the glowing Command Block, looking no different than the one Soren had and used on him and the rest of the Order.

Eyes narrowing, wondering, he reached a hand out and opened the GUI.)

Lukas glared at the table with the runes, despairingly, desperately. “What do these mean?” He looked up at Harper, holding the table with a death grip, “What do these-? Why is there a Command Block here?”

“I don’t kno-”

“It has a command,” Ivor commented.

Olivia’s eyes hardened. “What is it?”

There was a pause, an apprehensive, tense silence as everybody waited for Ivor to decipher the command.

“Infusion.”

A gasp from neither Lukas nor Harper prompted them to turn to Olivia, who backed against the wall, eyes wide. She swore under her breath as she looked away, hands going through her hair as she came to realization.

Ivor grunted as he got up from under the table and peeked over at what was going on. “Do you know what it means?”

Lukas held a hand out to her, concerned, “Olivia?”

Before his hand could even reach her shoulder, she moved away, twisting away. She went quiet, the programmer saying nothing, only breathing evenly, deeply, heavily.

“I need to think,” she said in a low voice, hugging herself.

* * *

“I’m going to try and decipher the code,” Ivor said after an apprehensive silence. Harper crouched down with him to try and help as he ducked under once again and opened the commands.

Lukas remained silent, trying to think of anything, _anything_ \- but he came up empty. He sighed, his hands dropping to his sides. The boy looked around, instead, looking for anything else; but what else was there to look at? Blank walls, empty shelves, and a chair at the corner, where a large white cloth lay. Curious, he walked over to it and took the cloth. Unfolding it, he found that it was actually a blanket; pure white, but charred grey at the corners, as if it was burnt. Other than that, it was plain and print-less, as is any normal blanket-

His heart caught in his throat.

“Lukas?”

A blanket, a plain, normal blanket that belonged on a  _bed_.

“Lukas? Are you alright?”

He shook his head, “Jesse was here," eyes darting back to the table, the runes, the Command Block; backing away from the chair and bumping against the table. “Jesse was here.”

Olivia frowned at Lukas from where she leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. “How do you know that?”

His mouth was open with shock, but nothing came out, nothing but stutters and stammers of meaningless noise.

“Lukas, it’s just a blanket, how is that indicative of-”

“Because this morning, I woke up and Jesse wasn’t there and her clothes still were with mine.”

They all blinked at him, still catching up to the run-off sentence he just spilled out.

Olivia, in particular, moved to give him a look, one akin to something like disbelief or tiresome frustration. “ _What do you mean_?”

“I-”

Lukas gulped.

“I was sleeping with Jesse, last night, and when I woke up she wasn’t there anymore. Her clothes were still there, o-on the floor, but she wasn’t…”

He winced and looked away. His fingers twitched as they played with themselves, his face going red with embarrassment.

Olivia groaned. “Of course.”

The writer managed to catch her rolling her eyes before she looked away from him momentarily. “I should have known.”

“Olivia-?”

“I should have known you’d gotten in the way,” she grumbled. Her voice took an octave deeper, her form going rigid with rage. She turned back to him and glared daggers into his eyes, digging hatred into his soul. Lukas backed away. “You’d been fucking her this entire time, haven’t you? _Distracting_  her-!”

“Distra- hey!” He stepped forward, “This has nothing to do with anything- the point is, Jesse was here-”

“What? Because you remembered she left you behind? That's a blanket, Lukas, that could mean anything _else_ besides sex!”

“I didn’t-” He stopped. His own face hardened, protective flames boiling within him. “Do you have a problem with mine and Jesse’s relationship?”

Olivia crossed her arms with a huff and a roll of her eyes, “Quite a few, yeah!”

“Why!? It has _nothing_  to do with you!”

“Oh!” She scoffed and laughed, “I have a few reasons to be concerned with it, believe you me.”

“Just because you were her friend since spawn doesn’t mean you have to have a hand in every aspect of her life-!” Lukas stopped himself and looked away, stomping in frustration and giving out an angered yell. “You know what, Olivia? Fuck off.”

She grinned bitterly at him, “Can’t do that, you’re too busy fucking Jesse.”

“Okay!!”

Lukas’ mouth fell open, too taken aback to form any words, debating with himself if he even really wanted to as Harper rushed between them and pushed them aside, saying something along the lines of, “Both of you have to calm down!”

But Olivia shook her head with an indecipherable look on her face as she turned away. Her hand reached for the rusted door knob.

“I have to go,” she said simply. Olivia gave them no other response, no explanation to any of the exclamations and no time to even process; as she rushed out the door with a hurried gait, already beyond their reach when they tried to catch up to her outside.

“Olivia!” They cried out after her, but they were left at the top of the hill, clueless and confused, angry, scared, and alone.

Lukas was left behind, stewing in anger towards any thing and grief over everything.

* * *

Petra grunted as she landed in a thrown-away pile of metal boxes, feeling the old rust scraping into her skin. She ignored the bleeding as she gathered her composure, squinting through her hazy vision, timing her re-entry while trying to make sense of the explosions and dust and quick movements between Soren and “Jesse.” As another box flew by her and landed with an explosion, she jumped off and rejoined the battle, Miss Butter brandished proudly in hand.

“Even as an ‘Old Builder,’ you’re still too slow for me!” The distorted version of Jesse’s voice crackles through, “What, are you getting old, Soren? Have you lived for too long? Your bones weak?”

Soren yelled as Jesse leapt away from the swing of his blade, quickly re-positioning herself to the opposite side of the basement. “Insolent demon!”

‘Jesse’ giggled. “Wow! I haven’t heard that insult in a long time! First time I'm hearing it from _you_ though," the possessed woman hummed, "though I guess, there's a first time for everything.’”

Petra arrived by his side, staring warily at the lines of flames that began to circle them, indicating another incoming attack from the cloaked-person. “Are we sure this is really her?” She asked the man between breaths, “This can’t be Jesse, right? Right?”

“It isn’t,” Soren seethed, glaring daggers at the demon. “If it were-”

The flames rose suddenly, causing Petra to yell in surprise, unable to understand what he was saying. She and Soren stood back to back, trying to find the white cloak beyond the walls of flames. A series of giggles, overlapping, stacking on top of each other, rising higher and higher in pitch and speed with the flames, were all they could hear.

“Soren, man,” ‘Jesse’ snickered, “You couldn’t tell yet? I know Jesse absolutely hated your guts, but you can’t even tell it’s me even if I’m wearing a different face?”

In that instant, the flames disappeared entirely, and the pair were surrounded by armies of tipped arrows, floating in midair and aimed towards them. Petra’s eyes widened.

“Get down!”

Without another word, she and Soren ducked and dodged the arrows that converged at high speed right where the two once were. Petra gasped and breathed heavily, coughing through the smoke as she staggered. Soren wasn’t any worse for wear, perfectly upright and looking for the next blow. His dark eyes landed on the heavenly white standing on top of a large pile of metal boxes, blinking blues and purples and whites while glitching in the negatives.

“You really are a terrible friend, Soren.”

Jesse was too far away for either of them to land an attack on her on time, no sneak-attacks or ambushes possible given that Jesse could just summon any weapon or form of offense without making a move.

If Petra wasn’t afraid or confused before, she was now.

“You left me behind,” the demon started, giggling incessantly. “You abandoned me and believed Romeo’s stupid lies. You betrayed me!”

The demon screamed those last words as the world around them trembled, and the pieces of the ceiling crumbled. Below them, the tremors raged with the demon’s giggles, which Petra now understood were sobs, and the metal boxes reformed, moving together animatedly and forming walls, cornering Petra to narrow halls and doing the same to Soren. Petra’s yells of shock were muffled as the walls solidified. She felt dizzy as the blinking lights were erratic and bright, moving in waves of patterns she couldn’t understand and circling all around her.

Still, she got up, a hand on the wall next to her, her weapon ready in the other.

As she quickly began to navigate her way through, looking for an exit or a center rendezvous, she came to understand three things:

 

> 1) She was in the middle of a confusing maze.

“Look at what your actions have done, Soren,” the demon reprimanded, “Look at what you did! Look at what you made me!”

The demon cried out overhead, under the maze, beyond the walls as if right next to Petra’s ear, the words echoing in the walls and bouncing from one end to the other.

“Even with all this now, you still aren’t sorry, are you?”

 

> 2) Whoever was making Jesse act this way, probably even possessing her, had a personal vendetta against Soren.

“Are you sorry at all, Soren?” The demon said in a wavering voice. “I know what you’ve done. You left them too and joined the Old Builders, and you experimented on innocent animals and people. You made monsters and things humans should never have their hands on.”

They, through Jesse’s distorted voice, laughed bitterly. “I know I’m being a hypocrite ‘cause of all the cryptids running around upstairs, but at least I can own up to the fact that I’m a bad person!”

Dead end. Dead end. Dead end. Petra grunted as she turned around and failed to slice through the metal boxes. The durability of her sword only decreased, by a large enough margin even in the context of Unbreaking II. In all the chaos, she made a mental note to finally add a Mending enchantment to it.

“What about you? Come on, man. Were you ever sorry, Soren? When you made friends with all those young spawns; when you fucked one of them and told him lies about who you were, were you sorry? ARE you sorry?”

Petra couldn’t hear Soren say anything back, if he did at all.

“What about Jesse? Are you sorry about her too?”

The warrior froze. What did that mean? What did Soren do to Jesse?

“I know what you’re gonna do with her,” the demon seethed. A sinister chuckle rang through its words, “What you _want_ to do with her! What she _is_!”

Petra’s shuddering breaths prevented her from moving forward. “Soren!?” She shouted, “What does she mean? What’s she saying?!”

“Would you tell her, Soren?” the possessed Jesse sneered. “Or should I?”

“Who ARE you?!” Was the old man’s only response.

The demon chuckled, knowing full well that Petra’s stopped trying to get out of the maze, that Soren was trying and failing to get through the walls with his bare hands. “She’s a pacifier,” He said bitterly, stifling a laugh as Soren screamed at him to stop. “A silly, disposable plaything for God. A _toy_.”

“What are you talking about?” Petra mumbled in horror, not understanding a single thing.

The demon reclined on a pile of rubble and continued, watching the slow, slow, slow spreading cracks of Soren’s efforts on the walls. “Soren made an A.I. and a fake body to lure Romeo in and keep him satisfied so that he wouldn’t go wreaking havoc in whatever world he wanted. Y’know, keep him from being bored, distract him from his grief, all that BS,” he explained with a roll of his eyes. “It’d be a smart thing to do, y’know, so that no actual person gets hurt- except for one thing!”

The demon stood and grinned. “Old Builders are stupid when it comes to AI.”

He circled the maze, walking on barrier blocks in midair, talking slowly, walking slowly; circling the maze as he _knew_  that Petra was listening.

“Don’t you remember PAMA? How he became sentient?” He said, making sure that “Jesse’s” voice wasn’t as distorted as before. Her confident, stubborn, feminine copy of a voice reverberated in the basement, within the walls of the maze. Petra inhaled sharply at the mention of her nightmare.

“The same applies here,” he continued. “Jesse disobeyed her directive. She became _alive_.”

“NO!” Soren screamed, though that only prompted an eye-roll from the demon.

“It’s funny, too,” he said with a chuckle, “because the only reason why she hasn’t completed her directive… is Soren himself. Isn’t that right?”

 

> 3) Jesse was right to be scared of Soren. He was hiding things from all of them. (The cost felt like the end of Petra’s whole world.)

After a tense silence, a tense silence in which Petra didn’t know how to react, how to respond, what to even _say_ ; Soren came through, asking- _begging_  for answers in a trembling voice.

“How do you know this?”

The demon’s bitter laughter rose as walls beyond what Petra could see crumbled. She herself was still stuck in the maze, but it sounded like parts of it were falling down.

The demon must be facing Soren.

“Look at me now,” he said. He looked into the eyes of his old friend, glaring hard with daggers formed out of grief, out of agony, out of betrayal. “Look at me and _tell_  me, to my face, that you don’t recognize me. After _everything_.”

Soren only stared, speechless, thoughtless.

“Are you really getting that old, Soren?” He cried, “Do you really not remember me?”

He could hear the cogs clicking into place, the clockwork reassembling itself slowly. The picture completing itself piece by piece.

A broken smile formed on his face, audible in his voice even to Petra, who stood trapped in the maze.

“You really can’t recognize me, after you, and me,” the demon said slowly, “and Xara, and Romeo, and Fred?”

Soren’s eyes widened in horror.

The demon smiled.

The picture was complete. The ashes were reassembled.

(There you go.)

Petra heard the clatter of a weapon falling to the ground, seizing and muting her thoughts with a death grip as the walls crumbled around her, and the basement became deathly silent.


	6. Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this is so long  
> oh uh- if it's been a while, i recommend going back and reading stay safe from the start before this. just to uh refresh on details i guess. or dont! up to you! i just fixed up a few things is all haha
> 
> please tell me what you think by the end of this! i worked basically a week on this, this is the most productive i've ever been haha and i'd really like to know.
> 
> i hope you enjoy! <3

All of Beacontown’s residents now hid underground.

The moment the bunker was finished, everybody rushed inside, inventories already full of supplies. They moved crates upon crates of materials from every kitchen, every bedroom, every shop, into the tunnels of the bunker; as quick as they could, pushing through even when the rain came, even when the storm strengthened.

It’s been almost a full day since their heroes left to find their leader. The Order of the Stone hasn’t returned.

“Do you think they’ll ever come back?” Simone wondered. She and Machi were the only remaining residents still standing aboveground.

The builder bit their lip. From behind their shades, they stared at all the memorabilia that inhabited the treasure room. Perhaps to a more experienced adventurer, they would mean nothing; sponges, blocks of diamond and gold, ender eyes- they were nothing, but to the New Order? Almost everyone in Beacontown knew what each memento stood for, knew the stories and inside jokes that had come from the adventures obtaining these objects, these treasures.

As Machi’s eyes landed on the Ender Dragon costume that sat next to the memorial, they bite their lip. “I don’t know, Sim.”

Another roll of thunder, a tremor in the air. The two residents looked up around them, at the noise that filled the atmosphere of the abandoned temple.

But they were greeted to darkness.

Emptiness.

Abandon.

(Despair.

Hopelessness.)

“Come on,” they hurriedly lifted the trapdoor to the bunker, “We have to go.”

Without another word, Simone followed them underground, and once they were both hidden with the rest of the town residents, the trapdoor was replaced with a block of obsidian.

Anxious, afraid, but holding out hope; Beacontown went underground, and the only thing that remained was its namesake, the beacon at the center of town lit up by the Witherstorm’s star.

The lights persisted through the lightning and the flood.

* * *

 

**“Nothing built can last forever. And every legend, no matter how great, fades with time. With each passing year more and more details are lost until all that remains are myths... half truths. To put it simply: lies.”**

 

* * *

The volcano was hot with undying lava and magma, cycling through and in-between each other, each a sedimentary of the other without truly solidifying. The temperature never cooled nor rose. It was constant, the sweltering heat steady in its tortuous presence. All of it contained within a mountain of soul sand.

You found Axel standing at the other end of an obsidian bridge. He stood tall at the dead center of the 2 block width, glowering at you from behind the lenses, from beneath his bangs. Turning your head slightly, away from the glaring boy, you could see the barrier blocks that made up the rest of the floor; the obnoxious, red no-entry signs taking up every space you lay your eyes on. They almost completely covered the bubbling lava from view. As you looked up for anything else, you could see blocks of TNT scattered about the inner-walls of the cave, swirling up towards the top, attached using nothing but the wonky physics of this world.

If any of them were triggered, they’d all fall unto the barrier blocks and do nothing.

At least, in a normal realm, that’s what would happen.

In an _ideal_ world.

The expression you wear is still dull and bored, contrasting greatly with the rage and frustration deep inside you. You decide to finally break the silence. “What are you doing, Axel?” You say through a voice that isn’t yours.

Axel responds immediately, “I think a better question would be, ‘Who the hell are you?’”

His voice is filtered through the gas mask, but you heard him loud and clear, beyond the thick air and the bubbling lava. It was as if you both were in a normal room, alone with each other, left to your devices.

“It’s me,” you replied, not even believing your own lie. That must have been evident in your voice too. No longer were you hiding your identity or keeping up the facade. Not well enough, at least, to convince the boy. “It’s Olivia.”

Axel glared at you, hard and true, through the lenses of the gas mask; through the mist, the smoke rising from the bubbling lava.

You looked back up at the surrounding walls, at the TNT barely disguised among the browns and reds and purples painting the place in its muck and waste. The frown on your lips deepens, and your eyes shimmer despite you in the nonexistent light.

“Why all this, _Ax_?” You ask him, waving your hand at the swirls of TNT rising into the ceiling, the sky; and you say the nickname he held dear mockingly. “What’s with all the TNT?”

The tone of voice sounds as if it were hers, the girl’s, but the words, the soul behind it; you know now that her friend doesn’t believe it anymore. He probably hasn’t for a long time.

This event, this place, was only a wake-up call, the final nail in the coffin; for all of them.

(For all of _you_.)

You bite your chapped lips.

“Redstone triggers TNT,” his muffled voice said to you. “TNT triggers explosions.”

Below the two of you, lava bubbled, rhythmically rising to the tune of the boy’s wrath.

The flames lick at you like the devil.

“This is the Dead Zone. It’s free real estate here, baby,” Axel said with a smirk to his voice. Suicidal glee made his eyes gleam in a determination he hadn’t felt in a long time. “You’re weak, which means I can kill you and you can’t escape from it.”

A diamond shovel appeared in his inventory, enchanted to hell and back and flaming in his hands. “So? Are you just gonna stand there like a dumbass, or are you actually gonna come at me?”

Despite yourself, you grin wickedly, summoning swords and splash potions into your inventory in a blink. The illusion is lost, the facade is gone.

You’ve been found.

“Gladly.”

The sharp edges of your weapons meet as lightning flashes in the incorrect sky.

* * *

Soren ignored every question of Petra’s, insisting after every query, “We should get back to the surface.” The trader begrudgingly followed him up to the surface of the church, distractedly climbing up the rubble after him.

“What the hell just happened?” She kept asking him, “That wasn’t Jesse, right? Is she possessed? Is that Jesse?”

She was stopped by him once again when he twisted to look to her and said with a glare, “I’ll explain everything later.”

And he turned away swiftly and walked ahead. Though silenced, she huffed and followed, ruminating alone, out-of-context, to what “Jesse” was talking about earlier.

The Church around her was dark and empty. All the monsters were gone, and most of the floor was too; now just rubble lying at the bottom of the basement, alongside the metal boxes erratically blinking. Only the altar remained, decorated still with chalices and books and statues of figures she couldn’t make out. Streaming in through the stained glass, the light shone on the statue in the middle, the only one she _could_ see: one of a masked- no, _muzzled_ woman, seated in uniform.

A shiver ran down her spine.

A toy for “God”? Somebody named Romeo? How exactly was Soren involved with that? He was the one with the Command Block, if she remembered right, maybe...

Petra almost lost her grip and fell back as she froze in horror.

(Did he _make_ Jesse?)

All this time she’d known Jesse as just the youngest among them, but what if Jesse hadn’t spawned at all? Would that explain her natural talent with a sword and her uncanny ability to be a mediator? Her kindness and smarts, were they part of an engineered personality?

..An _A.I._? A “fake spawn”? She refused to believe it, refused to believe that her best friend was anything like PAMA. PAMA wasn’t human in any way, and Jesse was the complete opposite. She was decent and considerate, and called out PAMA herself on how inhumane and stupid it was in the first place. How could they be the same?

Making it out of the church, Petra was first greeted by a burning sky. She hadn’t noticed before, when they first made it here, but it was now tinged red and orange, white streaks circling themselves in the pool with dark, grey clouds. A faint rumble emanated from nearby, and faintly, faintly, the wind blew; quiet, as if whispers from far away; but Petra felt in her gut that it would only get worse from there.

“Oh no…”

Soren stared at the sky, at the trees that slowly began to burn, and was filled with terror. Something behind the colors of the sky flashed, followed quickly by a booming rumble of thunder, sounding simultaneously like a sickening _crack!_

“The Dead Zone isn’t supposed to look like this.”

As if on cue, something small fell on Petra, something like a dew drop, making a small stain on her glove before it disappeared, as if being absorbed or evaporated. She looked up, to see the beginnings of a shower, normal, _actual_ rain falling from the sky. It was drizzling, now, but the clouds that began to bunch together, as if cramped in a small petri dish, shone with the background lightning _pools_ ; gallons of water or some foreign liquid sloshing inside.

(If she squinted, she could see 0s and 1s flow through everything she saw.)

_What the hell?_

“Guys!”

Turning to the right, three figures came running down a hill. One of which Soren apparently recognized right away, as he exclaimed his name, running to meet with him and the rest. Petra followed, confused and thrown for a loop. Meeting at an old, rotting gate, Lukas, Ivor, Harper-

She tackled the blond man in a hug, relieved and scrambling for familiarity. He returned the gesture, as if feeling the same way. “Wait- Where’s Olivia?” Pulling away, Petra blinked away tears as she heaved for breath, “Where’s Axel?"

Lukas answered her in a low voice, audibly _broiling_ with anger. “They’re gone. Ditched the entire thing altogether.”

“ _What!?_ Why?!”

Lukas shrugged as he looked away, a trembling hand going to his hip.

“We actually thought you’d seen her,” Harper added. “Olivia. She _just_ ran out, but we can’t find her.”

Petra shook her head, “We just got out of the church.”

“ _Besides that_ ,” Soren lightly pushed her aside (said woman saying nothing, though she sputtered as she blinked at him in bewilderment and mild frustration), stepping forward with hard eyes. “What happened!? Why is the sky burning?!!”

“The sky?”

All three of the remaining members stared at him with similar questions written all over their faces, and that was when Petra and Soren paled, considerably taken by fright.

“What are you talking about?” Ivor asked slowly. His arms were folded across his torso, dark red bleeding through his cloak. Soren pointedly kept his eyes away from it, burying himself in his rising thoughts.

“The sky! You guys can’t see it?!” The young trader frantically waved her arms, “It’s orange and red, it shouldn’t look like that!"

“Petra, the sky is _black_ , there’s nothing there!”

“Perception filter.”

Petra’s eyes narrowed at the old man beside her. “What?”

“Perception filter,” Soren repeated through grinding teeth. “Damn bastard’s trying to scare us.”

Apparently, none of the others caught on. “What are you- what _happened_ to you two?” Harper asked, “You were gone after the battle at the field.”

Petra almost said, “I don’t know,” when Soren cut in for her.

“We were taken by the manananggal, into that church,” he pointed to the old structure; brown, dirty, and covered in overgrown vines and spreading cracks. “The demon that possessed Jesse showed itself to us.”

Upon hearing the last sentence, the two other men, stubborn and frustrated, finally looked at the oldest man. “What are you talking about?”

All eyes landed on him.

Soren’s breathing was ragged and shallow, almost seemingly exaggerated as his hand fell and he looked away from everybody, casting himself in shadow. For the longest silence, that was all there was.

“Soren?”

...Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned and saw the boy who found the truth with Jesse; the girl the demon mocked; his former student and colleague; and-

Ivor stared back at him, dark eyes still somehow standing out from his pale skin, from the scars, from the shadows; and they were silently begging him to tell the truth.

For once.

 

The old man - fidgeting, afraid, trembling, and angry - took in a deep, heavy breath.

* * *

  
_“Soren!”_

_Before he could even turn, he was tackled by a heavy weight and deafening laughter. Both boys landed in the lake nearby, together with the contents of the toppled-over chest. Soren’s displeasure came out as bubbles, which didn’t help the other boy’s hysteria. He was reduced to wheezing as his friend beneath him shoved him over, splashing more water unto the scene._

_Soren glared at him from behind his dripping bangs, his pout evident and clear. “Why?”_

_His friend cackled and fell back into the water. Soren only shook his head and moved his attention to drying his wet hair._

_“What the_ **_hell_ ** _happened here?”_

_They both looked up to the man in red, at the entrance at the top of the cave; who overlooked the spilled tree drops scattered all over, with a face of exasperation. “David pushed me!” Soren cried as he pointed at the boy in front of him. Said boy grinned lazily and waved, “Hi Romeo!”_

_Romeo rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Why did you push Soren into a lake?”_

_David beamed and looked to his friend, “Look what I found!”_

_In his hands, from his hotbar, appeared a large shell of pale pink and brown, a curled thing rough and textured with sand. Soren frowned, though he leaned in closer, staring at it curiously. “What is that?”_

_“It’s a nautilus shell!” David scooted closer and sat almost shoulder-to-shoulder with his friend, still excitedly beaming. “I was fishing and got attacked by a Drowned, which sucked, but I totally nabbed this in the fight!” He grinned at his friend, “Pretty sick, right?”_

_“That’s completely useless,” Romeo chided with a glare. “I could generate chests worth those things in a blink- stacks upon them, if I wanted to! None of us even need a conduit. How is that an achievement?”_

_“I found it by myself! I think that’s totally a win for me,” David defended with a pout._

_“It’s useless-”_

_“Shut up!” He stood suddenly and flew to the top of the cave, meeting Romeo at eye-level in midair. The nautilus shell was held with vigor, close to the boy’s chest, “I don’t need you to tell me how worthless I am for the 600th time.”_

_Romeo’s face hardened. “I didn’t say that.”_

_“You didn’t need to.”_

_With a huff, the boy stuffed the shell in his inventory and wielded his enchanted fishing rod. He glared at nothing, look away from both boss and colleague. “I’m going to Xara.”_

_Then, without another word, he flew home; leaving behind droplets of water as he rushed through the air._

_Romeo watched him disappear, flying past the mountains and into the horizon; and when nothing was left, he turned back to the other kid in the pond. “Do you need help getting out of there, or can you pull your own weight?”_

_“Uh,” Soren held up a hand, “I’m good.”_

_“Good.”_

_And in a blink, he was gone._

_Soren stared at the empty space, letting out a sigh. He shook his head and got up with a grunt. What had just transpired quickly dissolved into unimportance in his mind, as he picked up the logs and twigs that were left a scattered mess._

* * *

 

**“His name was David. He was an Operator, and so was I. We were the first two people to ever spawn.”**

 

* * *

_The night was dark and there was no moon or cloud in the sky. Darkness enveloped the land as far as the eye can see, forming some sort of dome with the twisting trees and the leaves as smoke rose into the air, from a bonfire. It was as large as a hut, and circling it, the humans danced merrily. They clapped and they sang, and they smiled and they laughed. Music filled the air with the cackling fire and the chatter, courtesy of the instrumentalists, who played seemingly without end._

_(Too loud.)_

_“Why can’t we talk to the others?” David asked innocently._

_The three figures hid behind a boulder._

_“Because we’re powerful,” their mentor answered plainly. “Believe me, if we showed ourselves to them, we’d basically be inviting hell’s door to the overworld.”_

_“But why?” Soren wondered aloud. He went ignored as David piped up, “But we’re_ **_not_ ** _.”_

 _The other two looked to him, questioning. David blinked. “But we’re not! You_ **_gave_ ** _us these powers; Soren and I spawned completely normal. And anyway, all we can do is, like, spawn a couple hundred items and fly. You guys can make new creatures out of nothing!”_

 _“Still. Even if you can’t make entirely new species by yourselves,” The mentor looked back again to watch the festivities the other, non-Admin people indulged themselves in, “What you do have is_ **_more than enough_ ** _to be abused.”_

_The two boys shared a look with a frown, curious and worried. “What do you mean by that?”_

_“It means I have more experience and you’re both better off not knowing.” He promptly pushed himself off the boulder they were hiding behind and floated into the dark forest. “Come on. We should go home.”_

_David frowned. “If we can’t help them, then what’s the point of us?”_

_“They don’t need us_ **_yet_ ** _,” He corrected the boy. “If they need us, we’ll be there. But not right now.”_

_The other boy followed his example and moved away from the boulder, flying next to his mentor. Looking back at his friend, he could see the skepticism and doubt in his face. It was practically written in red ink._

_“David?”_

_He glanced down for a moment, lips pursing, fists curling as he tried to think. He looked over the boulder._

_The fire danced in his eyes._

~~_(Missing roommate.)_ ~~

_Giving out one final sigh, he followed the other two into the woods._

_Going home, David said not a word_

* * *

 

**“The three Admins: Fred, Xara, and Romeo, created this server, this universe. They were the true gods. The first world, the main world, the one that houses the Portal Network; was our home, the world we spawned in. Everything else - the other worlds in the network, this world, you - came after.”**

 

* * *

_“Hey Xara, are you god?”_

_His mentor gave him an amused smile. "What makes you ask that?”_

_“Well,” David put up a hand and started counting off fingers, “You’re super powerful, you can create things that didn’t exist before without a crafting table, you can fly, you can do superhuman things, you can teleport-”_

_He went on and on, listing off everything he’d seen her and the other Admins do. By the end of it, Xara chuckled._

_“You think that makes me god?”_

_David and Soren shared a look. They shrugged. “Well, yeah.”_

_Xara’s lips quirked into a sort of smirk. She pushed her books away and fell lax in midair, her chin on her knee as if sitting on some invisible floor._

_“Okay, I’m flying, I can make things that didn’t exist before, and I can manipulate anything around me,” she raised a brow and laughed. “So what?”_

_Romeo, listening in from the other end of the room, was aghast as he fell off his chair._

_Soren frowned. “What do you mean, “so what”?”_

_“Do you boys really think that just because I don’t need a crafting table to make something that didn’t exist, with my imagination,” she made jazz hands, “and you can’t, that I’m more powerful than you?”_

_She descended to sit directly in front of them, legs crossed; and she leaned in. “You two can do that too.”_

_The boys gasped. Xara chuckled, “Of course, not the same way as I do, but- here, think about it like this.”_

_Conjured in her hands, in that second, were a block of wood, a diamond pickaxe, and three nautilus shells. She set them down on the floor in front of her, in front of the boys._

_“David, do you have your knife?”_

_Without hesitation, it appeared in his hands. “Uhuh.”_

_She motioned to the block of wood, “Do you know how to whittle?”_

_He beamed with a grin and nodded eagerly, and took the wood block and began cutting chips of it away. While he worked, Xara then took the attention of Soren. “Do you think you can make holes at the two polar ends of each of these shells?”_

_“What for?”_

_The Admin then conjured five string and grinned. “You’ll see.”_

_Within minutes, both boys were done with their respective tasks. In David’s hand was a small stick, sharp and as long as a finger; which, with Xara’s instructed, he added to a small hole at the other, rounded end. In front of Soren were the same three nautilus shells, but punctured with holes at opposite sides._

_“Now, here.”_

_Xara had the strings looped around her fingers, all tied together and attached to make a string about four feet long. One end, thin and silky, dangled from her pointer finger, and with some maneuvering, she threaded it through the hole of the stick - the needle - and detached herself from the string. Then she took a shell and inserted the needle through the hole, and she took the tip of it peeking out of the other end, and pulled. The string followed._

_Smiling at the boys watching, she held out the shell suspended by the string running through it, to the boys’ wide eyes. “Do you want to try?”_

_Soren looked to his friend, knowing immediately that he would want to do it more. Sure enough, David made childish grabby hands as Xara passed the materials to him gently. Then, settling down, he followed her example._

_Needle and string through one end and out the other._

_Eventually, all three shells were suspended together by the same string; the string that was put together by five shorter strings tightly tied as one._

_(A little ways beside the group, Romeo watched.)_

_“Do you see that?”_

_The shells and string, together, were set down on the ground._

_“You two helped make this.” She said with a small grin, “I made the shells and the string and the wood, but you two made the needle that threaded the string, and punctured the holes we used to put them together.”_

_“Without a crafting table!” Soren exclaimed. A grin made its way to his and David’s faces. Their mentor nodded._

_“Exactly. You two are just as capable of making something that didn’t exist before as I am. Entirely new species? You can make that too.”_

_Her fellow admin opened his mouth to object, but she seemed to realize and held up a hand; and continued seamlessly. “We’re all still made up of a bunch of cells and chemicals, which you can replicate and multiply, and harness and use as much as you want; if you’re careful.”_

_“So,” David blinked, “So-?”_

_“You’re just as powerful as an Admin. Just in a different way.”_

_Romeo frowned and finally piped up. “Then what difference does it make?” Xara twisted to her friend as he continued, “You’re implying that they’re basically admins too-”_

_“No, I wasn’t. I’m saying we both can do the same things, just in different ways. You can make your little creeper-spiders however you want;_ **_they_ ** _can do the same through chemistry and biology.”_

_“So,” Soren perked up. “I can do what you do!?”_

_“You’re still human?”_

_Xara smiled, a chuckle escaping her. “I’m still human; and I still need to wire redstone by myself.”_

_Slyly, she sent a playful smirk to Romeo. “A quick snap of fingers won’t do the job.”_

_“Does that mean you can die, too?”_

_Suddenly the air fell._

_They all turned to the operator, to David, who sat with his own nautilus shell, cracked and breaking. His voice was low and soft. Looking up from his hair, his braids dangling, green eyes stared wide and glistening._

_Xara nodded. “Yes, we can die. Sickness, hunger, thirst, murder- we may have some boosts, but we can all die in the same way, in the end.”_

_The boy looked down, drawing his knees to his chest. “Oh.”_

_“But,” Xara’s casual, relaxed disposition returned, a gentle smile forming on her face and comforting the young spawns with the familiarity. “Not for a very long time. Our lifespans can last_ **_eons_ ** _.”_

_Romeo scowled and glared at the Operator. “Why are you so curious to find out if we can die, anyway?”_

_Whatever comfort David might have felt disappeared, as he backed away and cried, “I was_ **_just_ ** _asking!”_

_“Lay off him, Ro,” Xara chastised, lightly smacking him up the chin. He halfheartedly glared at her as she stood. “He’s a kid, he can be curious about death.”_

_“Kids are rowdy, and reckless.” He glanced at David and Soren as he pointed a thumb at them; the former upset and the latter offended, “I’d watch ‘em if I were you!”_

_“_ **_Stop_ ** _.”_

_His expression didn’t pass her by, and she glared right back at him, with eyes much darker, much harsher and real. “Continue that and I’ll call Fred on you, and we know his wrath.”_

_Romeo childishly stuck his mouth out, which she responded to by playfully manifesting a muzzle over. Xara turned to the boys and motioned her head away, “You two should turn in for the night. It’s late.”_

_The pair didn’t need anymore than Romeo’s muffled distaste. “Come on, David!” Soren prompted, and without a moment’s hesitation, the two best friends ran away._

* * *

_They were surrounded by bodies._

_Soren had never seen this place before, though he was surprised to learn that his mentors were strangers to it as well._

_Fred teleported them all here right after the explosion, although “right after” said nothing for the images imprinted in the young spawn’s head. There was smoke and fire and screams that only lasted a second- and then they were gone, and where there was a black, dark sky; there was now just white, and baby blue, and pinks and reds and yellows, overlapping and looking like cells, nuclei._

_And they were empty._

_They shouldn’t have scared Soren so much, but they did._

_Perhaps it was the screams. The deafening blast. Perhaps it was the bodies._

_Perhaps it was his gods’ wrath._

_They were yelling and maybe even crying, noises everywhere and the stench of the place was_ **_awful_ ** _. It smelled of burning, smoke billowed; and distant, garbled, inhuman cries echoed within the abyss. What would have normally been a night spent camping in the woods, with a bonfire and snacks, was a grave. A dump._

_And his mentors were arguing._

_They terrified Soren._

_(It excited him.)_

_He had no idea what was going on._

_Looking for some sort of hope or comfort or solidarity, he looked to his left, where his best friend always was, and David - clutching his security blanket, now burnt and grey at the edges - seemed just as, if not more, lost._

* * *

 

**“David destroyed that first world, killing several civilizations and irreparably reducing the world to one floating island and a hundred or less people. Code was all that surrounded that one island, that’s how bad the damage was.”**

 

* * *

_“What do you mean, ‘a single bomb’?! That was NOT a single bomb!”_

_“I swear it!” Romeo said with defensive hands. It took all of their other friend’s efforts not to reel the seething woman in. “I’m telling the truth, and I know! It was David, with one block of TNT, and it was- just-_ **_glowing_ ** _like a Command Block!”_

_Questions filled his head- a Command Block? David?_

_His friend was trembling and stuttering and crying._

_“I saw him!”_

_“Xara, I don’t know what he’s talking about!”_

_Soren never realized how scary the admins were until they started screaming, and yelling, and started to look like glowing shadows in the dark, towering over him like the rolling clouds of a storm. Reds and blues and greens clashed together in the void casting sickening purples like sun rays and burning themselves in his mind._

_He didn’t want to get anywhere near, too afraid of what might happen._

_Next to him, David cried._

* * *

 

**“Fred killed him as punishment, and gave me the remnants of the bomb he used for safekeeping. I stepped down as Operator after that and lived among the humans - you may know them as the Old Builders - now human and powerless myself. Now, millions of years later, David is alive, somehow, and he’s possessing Jesse. I don’t know how he did, but the why…”**

 

* * *

_“It wasn’t me!” David cried. He tried to resist Fred’s hold and push himself to his friends, to his mentor, to Xara, “Please, you have to believe me! Romeo’s lying!”_

_But she couldn’t even look him in the eye. She was holding back tears._

_Likewise, he refused to surrender to his relentless sobs._

_“Please!”_

_His desperate pleas, wrought with despair and wet with tears, turned to Soren. Grasping for hope,_

_groping empty air._

_Soren backed away and shook his head. It was like he could hear David’s soul shatter._

_And he disappeared._

* * *

 

 **“He’s coming for me, to take revenge on me for ‘abandoning him.’** **_But as far as I know_ ** **-”**

 

* * *

Breathing through the nose was an empty chuckle, an action that meant nothing to the demon or his vessel as “she” stroked the dead bark of the tree.

( _Could feel it. Couldn’t escape it, the poison running through my veins. Feel it pumping in my heart, to the rest of my parts._

 _It hurts, but I’ve never felt more alive._ )

To the smell of burning, they cried, surrounded by bodies.

* * *

 

**“David was the one that did it. He destroyed our world. He deserved what he got.”**

 

* * *

* * *

**Choice, noun**

**an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.**

 

* * *

Everybody stared at Soren, dumbfounded by the story he just laid before them.

Had they expected that he lied and kept something else about his past hidden from them? Of course they did.

But to this magnitude?

Ivor supposed he should have known.

“But what if he didn’t?”

Soren blinked at him, and then looked away immediately the moment their eyes met. Ivor pursed his lips, resisting biting his tongue. “You lied about the Command Block to us, you lied about the Ender Dragon to the whole world, and the Old Builders lied about Tim.” His frown deepened, “I don’t know if you haven’t noticed yet, Soren, but you surround yourself with liars. This ‘Fred’ you mentioned, how do we know he really killed this David?”

His glare narrowed at the old man, hard and harsh.

“Do you really believe that he actually destroyed that world?”

“I-”

But Soren stopped, and the doubt seeding itself was evident as his eyes darted everywhere. “I-”

Thunder rumbled in the sky. The soft, low growls of the monsters emerging from their hiding places followed soon after.

Petra inched closer to the gate, taking slow, heavy steps. “We should go. Get somewhere else.”

Everybody else agreed non-verbally, and they moved in unison back to the plaza.

With one last look at the Church, Soren followed from behind.

* * *

The lava below them bubbled with the rising temperatures, boiling, rising higher and higher; barred by none.

The two inside the hollow mountain paid it no mind.

Their blades met, shards of diamond and iron and gold and stone, splinters and chips of wood and hard rope; were scattered all over the invisible floor- or whatever was left of it, now that parts were being destroyed bit by bit by the TNT that fell and exploded. As the lava rose and consumed the remnants, so did they, expertly maneuvering the unseen environment, focus entirely on their opponent.

The latter was very much to your detriment.

Axel always dodged your every move, every strike met with thin air, every blow unreceived. Your weapons and potions instead hit pressure plates and buttons, tripwires laying like a carpet to the ballroom; every step you took, every move you made, triggering another explosion, each twitch of a nerve enough to set off bombs.

“Redstone can trigger TNT,” Axel explained uselessly. It was obviously for himself, to boost his ego, to further his already overblown confidence; as you glared at him from the obsidian, toes almost touching the rising lava. He stood upon a block of TNT, glowering at you with hardened, dark eyes. The glass of his mask reflected the glowing lava, almost to a blinding fault.

“I didn’t use it a lot back in Boom Town, but Olivia and I figured that out, when she was still alive.”

He brandished a pair of flint and steel, old and used, in his offhand. 

“I’m not dumb.”

Scraping them together, Axel used its final scraps of durability on the block he stood on, then leapt away, just in time as it hissed and fell into the lava. Your balance was temporarily interrupted as the block exploded, prompting the lava to rise higher, the boiling heat to become hotter, the bubbling to become faster.

Looking up, as the lava began to burn the skin of your vessel and the clothes you liked to wear, you look up to find him, seething. Your eyes landed on another invisible block, where you found him standing, turned away, with a diamond sword in one hand and the other holding on to a jagged rock sticking out of the wall, his palm bleeding.

Slowly, he turned back to you, and his mask slipped off, falling easily off his face with dangling leather and shattered glass.

The bloody face of the millennia-younger boy looked down on you, confident and smug.

You growl and scream as you rise from the earth beneath you, hovering in the sweltering air as you reach him and bring the both of you eye-to-eye. Very quickly, his mischievous attitude gave way to his real motives, as your true nature revealed itself in turn. His face contorted into a glare, enraged and narrow; his brow furrowed and creased, fresh blood and gunpowder lining, caking his person.

Under his breath, he growled, viciously and mercilessly, “Stop wearing her face.”

It was your turn to sneer at him, a sickening, malicious grin cracking through your mask; and instantly the battle continued.

* * *

The more Gomez memorized the image of the creature, the more the terror seeped into her skin.

She was fully invested in the conversation, the “meeting” currently being held as the leaders bickered back and forth over what was going on, what to do-

“We should ring State of Emergency! Cover all territory, there’s nothing else to do! The flood is going to reach the southern areas soon if we don’t get off our asses!”

“By now it’s _already_ at the southern areas! If you were smart about this, you would have prepared before coming here, where it’s the new Redstonia Sea!”

“It’s just a flood, this isn’t a big deal…”

\- but her eyes were distracted. As if the creature had deliberately locked her focus onto it as it cackled at the back of its throat and tilted its head. Its undead grin remained consistent, though it felt like the light was tricking her into seeing things that obviously weren’t there.

(Like Jesse’s face, for example.

Her angry, tear-streaked face.)

“Why did we come all the way out here?”

Lightning flashed as she saw alive, green eyes in the void-like sockets, which flickered briefly as she swallowed bile and trembled in the cold. She didn’t look away from the creature that seemed to giggle, as she continued in a genuinely terrified mumble, “Why are we here?”

“I came to warn you all about Jesse,” Gretchen supplied. He sounded guilt-less.

“Because of the notes,” one of them weakly suggested.

The rest were silent.

Gomez continued, speaking slowly; as if she herself was trying to catch up to her own realizations. “The flood is in the south now. It’s been hours since it took this area. And we all came here just in time- meaning we all left early.”

She finally broke away from the creature and scanned the faces of her fellow leaders. All of them were nervous, afraid, lost; and cold.

Freezing.

Finally, her eyes rest on Aristotle, the villager that came in last. Gomez can barely utter the words from cold lips.

“How bad is it?”

He’s shaking. Water drips over his brow and he’s blinking rapidly. He stutters.

“Our homes have been destroyed. The flood was as high as the rooftops”

**_As you deserve._ **

All of them felt it, the horror that quickly sunk in. They paled and gasped and realized what went wrong. Why they were here.

“We made a terrible mistake.”

They had to tear down the treehouse and make boats, as the flood reached the top of the hill. It seemed like a shore when they climbed down; when they hurriedly made the boats. They left the hill behind in a hurry to see the damage, to see Beacontown, their homes; and the creature watched.

But they didn’t think about that.

Everything was gone, submerged under the murky water. Like Aristotle described his village, their people were barely holding on to the roofs of their homes. They were cold and wet and sick, some of them even floated dead in the water; and there was no sign of a sky.

They could do nothing.

As they floated along the flood, Gomez couldn’t let go of the feeling of being watched, of Jesse’s intense glare burning into the back of her skull; but when she looked, there was nothing. Only the endless, rainy horizon greeted her, with the specks of the tops of trees and mountains.

Yet the feeling remained.

A shiver ran down her spine.

Trying to distract herself, she looked down at her hotbar to check the time, as the sky offered no indication, as everything seemed the same. **3:03 AM** , the clock read in fine white print. The moon was nearing the edge, and the sun’s beams were peaking in.

Lightning flashed, and she could have sworn she saw Jesse’s face in the glass; but there was nothing there.

The storm groaned and howled.

* * *

Was the world laughing at Lukas right now? Was this fate? Was this his punishment for every wrongdoing he’s done in his life?

Revenge. After somebody he had virtually nothing to do with.

(As if he wasn’t already sick of Soren’s more-or-less useless presence anyway.)

He looked at all his companions. Soren was farther ahead than all of them. He was hunched over, his shoulders to his ears as they walked through the thick air of the Dead Zone. Harper was a little ways behind him, to his right, looking between him and the road in front. Ivor was next to her, his limp hand in hers; he seemed to be glaring at the former Operator. Petra was uncharacteristically silent. She walked in front of him, to his left, hugging herself with a tight grip. He tried to nudge or elbow her to get her attention, but she gave him nothing more than brief, second-long glances. She seemed to be holding back tears.

Lukas sighed. Jesse was right when she said that his upset made things awkward back at Soren’s Wool World. To him, this was frustrating.

Did they have a plan? Where were they going? What now?

He broke through the silence. Somebody had to.

“You know what I don’t get?” 

The tremor of the earth rippled beneath them once again, metaphorically and literally. Nobody reacted nor raised any sort of objection. Soren glanced back at him. “What is it?”

His voice was laced with poison, a particular bitterness borne of exhaustion as faint memories of the Witherstorm, of the End Crystals in the Far Lands, came back to him; murky and far away. “Why drag _us_ into it?” The much-younger spawn asked. Lukas hoped Soren felt his anger, felt the daggers he glared into his back, how much he wanted all this bullshit to stop.

He knew what it did.

“Why did he take her? Why take Jesse?”

Unable to (not _allowed_ to) strangle the man himself or punch anything nearby, he asked with knuckles white as he dug his nails into the scarred flesh of his palm.

“What does she have to do with your drama?”

Soren paused, hesitated for a significant amount of time, stammering, “I- I don’t know-”

“Yes, you do.”

The familiar, raspy voice broke through. If Lukas was mad, Ivor was _livid_ , scarier than when he’d first met him in the auditorium basement; scarier than when he confirmed the truth with the End Crystals in the basement; but it was the same kind of wrath.

“Soren, do you know how we found you?” Ivor continued without waiting, “You left behind your journal. The one you always wrote in, with me? You left it behind in the lounge and Petra and Lukas found it.”

And from the hotbar, it appeared in his hands. The old and worn leather he and Petra did, indeed, find in the living room. He held it with a death grip that seemed to show his bones through his skin, pressing into the age and tear.

It seemed personal to him, which only fueled Lukas’ feelings of disconnect from the entire scenario, in much the same way as he did back during the Witherstorm debacle. None of this meant anything to him. None of it _should_ have had anything to do with him. This grudge “David” had with Soren happened millions of years ago. The only reason he and the rest of the New Order were here was because Jesse was right at the center of it, the “leading lady,” as it were. In front of the curtains, the face of the show, of the backstage drama. Their group’s leader, the woman who tore the Witherstorm to shreds, defeated a rogue AI, and pulled their group through a seemingly endless hall of portals.

They were here for _her_.

This drama wasn't theirs. They just had front row seats.

“Project:OMEGA-Revelations,” Ivor started. He seemed to be in a hurry, words rushed and strung together with a toxic vigor Lukas was all too familiar with. It was anger. “Axel found it in one of your labs. You mentioned a mistake in your journal, and you were dismantling the pod that held that child in the temple.”

He heard Petra gasp and glanced her way, meeting her eyes. Her mouth fell open, her eyes sparked some sort of recognition he couldn’t quite relate to. Something resembling dread was there, too, and she was pale. Lukas felt a pit in his stomach.

He felt like he should know where this was going, but he didn’t. Like tracks in the nether, he was oblivious and along for the ride.

Anticipating, he bit his lip.

(Child?)

“Ivor-”

“A toy- Romeo,” Petra took Soren’s arm and held him back, forcing him to turn around and face the group. In the middle of the plaza road, they stopped. “David mentioned something about you- _making_ Jesse? For Romeo?”

Lukas suddenly felt like a wash of cold water was poured over him, and he jolted, and he could only stammer disbelief and confusion as he looked to Soren for answers.

He seemed just as lost as he was.

Or… no. No, that was guilt.

“N- _no_ ,” his eyes were wide and pinpricks, in horror as he looked up at them, at Petra, at Ivor. “No- that can’t-!”

Ivor had stared at Petra too, but when the information sunk in, everything clicked into place, and his glare was on Soren again; rejuvenated, the flames growing and rising higher and higher. “Jesse’s the child, isn’t she?”

“No,” Soren stuttered over and over as he shook his head in denial, but not even he seemed to believe his own fearful deflections.

“The project Axel found and Harper decrypted was to keep the end of the world from happening ‘again,’ which is the explosion you said David caused and was punished for.”

“World’s End,” Harper murmured.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Ivor said with a cock of his head. “Jesse was the child you were making in that pod, that machine. That’s why the Entity could possess her, with that Command Block in the hut. It was programmed with _Infusion_.”

“Ivor,” Lukas’ voice was low, almost akin to a growl; but a certain dread was evident in his voice. It poisoned the air. “What are you saying?”

“She’s not human.”

And the penny drops.

Soren screws his eyes shut. He’s trembling and his fists are balled and worn and bleeding; and he’s seething.

“Jesse was never human.”

He stood straight, and he looked just like earlier again. An old man, but not bumbling and silly; but just aged and battered, standing in the shadows he’s lived in his entire life.

“I made her with my own two hands. It’s my fault she exists.”

Sounds of surprise, of complete shock.

Sounds of defeat,

of giving up.

Ivor sighed, “That’s what I thought.”

* * *

“I know what you’re gonna do with her. What you _want_ to do with her! What she _is_!”

That’s what the demon, what David, said. Jesse was a fake human who was supposed to ‘pacify’ Romeo, one of the three gods that made the reality Petra and everybody else she knew and loved lived in. She was programmed to do so from the very beginning, the entire purpose of existence revolved around that one man.

It was sickening to think about.

She asked Soren, “Why can’t Xara and Fred do that themselves?” To which he answered, “They’re both dead. Romeo killed them.”

Immediately, they all understood.

He made Jesse so that Romeo wouldn’t start a World’s End like David supposedly did, to keep him from killing people as punishment like Fred did. Keep him satiated, keep him distracted. Soren made her the perfect hero to get the admin’s attention. “I’d been working on her for years, _years_ before the Ender Dragon,” he said. Petra didn’t miss how Ivor flinched, how his fists curled and trembled, and how he looked away.

(“Were you ever sorry, Soren?”)

Jesse hated the man and was scared of him at the same time, she could see that now. But did she always know? She’d think, “She couldn’t have,” but what did Petra know?

Everything felt so surreal.

Her best friend wasn’t a real human; her best friend is being possessed by a demon, some kid that was supposed to be dead but isn’t; her best friend is gone-

(“Next time, Petra, okay? I’m sorry, I’m just- I’m really busy-”)

...She’s been gone for a long time.

( _A red gem in a golden chain locket._ )

“So what now?”

Lukas was glaring at all of them. He was tense, possibly far more than any of them. _Makes sense_ , Petra mused numbly, _His girlfriend’s life is on the line here_.

(His girlfriend isn’t even human. She wondered how futile all his drama with the Ocelots was in light of Jesse’s true nature.)

“We have to get Jesse back, and we’ve been doing _nothing_ but **_exposition_** since we got out of that hut!” He said with raised voice, “We have to get Jesse back, right? You guys didn’t just- just _give up_!?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Soren raised a hand. He sounded tired. “That command block was programmed with Infusion. It’s a command that forces a soul into a particular vessel and binds the two together permanently. It’s not easy-”

“How do you even know that?!” Lukas yelled. “You’ve been feeding us nothing but lies ever since we met. How are we supposed to believe you?!”

“Oh my god, lower your voice, will you?”

Everybody froze.

( _That voice..!_ )

David stood at the other side of the plaza. David stood there, wearing Jesse’s face with a casual smile, eyes gleaming red with malice. The white cloak stood out amongst the muted colors, almost seemingly glowing in its impossibly pristine condition. Jesse’s hair cascaded down her shoulders, curly and wavy as it always is; brown locks resting on her chest, which rose and fell evenly. Calmly.

Holding the cloak together was a brooch, a red gem in a yellow casing, latched directly under the dip of her collarbone.

...Or rather, his.

“It’s completely true, Lukas. All of it.”

Then the calmness was gone, the serene nature of his presence and demeanor was gone, as a wicked smirk contorted Jesse’s face, and her red eyes and brooch glowed as if to bathe the entire world in red.

Petra stepped back, but it felt like she hit a brick wall. Her heart thrummed with fear as she felt drained, hopeless, terrified.

“Jesse had no soul. I fixed that.”

Another tremor, one that struck the ground harder this time, almost knocking the group to the ground as they yelped and tried to find balance. The sky seemed to be burning even more, brighter yet somehow more muted at the same time. The clouds were dark, becoming darker and darker, and the rainwater now seemingly gone in favor of dark snow, of ash. Smoke rose out of the volcano, although the underbelly glowed a brilliant orange. It beat like a heart.

The only one who seemed unaffected by the quake was David himself, still inhabiting Jesse’s body. He giggled in despair.

“Get out of her!” Lukas yelled, “Get out of her you sick freak-!”

He ran forwards but then fell immediately upon hitting some sort of wall. Ripples of soft reds formed from the impact, forming the shape of a dome that overlapped the figures of Petra and David like shadows. Everybody gasped.

The demon remained, smiling calmly, standing still; staring directly at Petra, the warrior who stood frozen in fear as she realized they were alone.

“David!”

He didn’t look away. Soren called louder, “David, please! I-”

He choked.

“I’m sorry!”

David closed his eyes and sighed; a short, breathy laugh escaping through.

He opened them again and retained focus on Petra, but he spoke to everybody who could hear.

“Did you know that hell is actually made of prismarine?”

Nobody said a thing. David continued, “Fred didn’t kill me, but he did tear my soul from my body. He dumped my empty husk in the grave, and he locked me within the code.”

He took in a shaky breath. Tears seemed to form at the corners of his eyes; and only now did Petra notice that there were faint stains lining his cheeks: unwiped tears. “Prison was cold, a nightmare. I was alone for so long, but I wasn’t the first. There were other prisoners too, dozens of them. Fred had been at this for a long time.”

A humorless chuckle. “Jesse was activated prematurely, and she woke up scared. I’ve seen it. It’s her nightmare, the childhood monster that’s haunted her her whole life. People, _adults_ , arguing and yelling at each other and _using her_ for their own personal gain. She hated it, so she ran away. Far, far away.”

David trailed off. A small, empty smile graced his face as he looked down.

“I can hear her crying right now,” he continues in a low voice, “She can’t escape it, just like I couldn’t escape my prison.” He held out his hands, “I’m stuck here, see? I couldn’t get out until I had a body, but is this worth it? Do you think it’s worth it?”

“Stop pretending like you’re some sort of sympathetic villain,” Lukas seethed.

David continued, ignoring him. “She wants everything to stop. _Jesse wants to die_.”

Finally, his eyes refocused on Petra, staring intently and harshly. He ignored Lukas’ suddenly confused whimpers, Soren’s mindless mutters of _pleas_ for this nightmare to stop; he didn’t have to look to know that Harper and Ivor were frozen in shock and guilt.

They all were feeling the same thing, anyway.

David’s lips twitched into a smirk.

“Won’t you listen to her, Petra?”

_Kill her._

That’s what this demon was saying. _Kill Jesse_.

“Why?” She choked out.

“Because I’m a demon, she’s soulless, and her body is basically mine until the day we both die,” David casually explained with a shrug, “Kill her, and your friend’s body’ll be free of me! And I'll also be dead, so it’s kind of a win-win, dont’cha think?”

Lukas sputtered, “But _she’ll_ be dead!”

“Then don’t kill her!” The demon laughed, “I’ll just let her control her body until the day we die; but I’ll still be possessing it. Remember?” He grinned lazily and tapped at his temple, “Jesse is soulless. She might be in control, but I’ll still see what she sees. My soul is bound to her body. We can’t be separated until _we both_ die.”

Lukas was absolutely boiling. “You’re a sick asshole.”

The demon said nothing.

Petra could deny it all she wanted, but she was terrified. It was a miracle that she was standing straight at all. Her breathing was shaky, stuttering, and she felt faint. _This can’t be happening. This is a nightmare_.

“Why me?” She said instead, “Why not Soren? I thought _he_ was who you had a problem with.”

She wanted out. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want this. No.

“Oh,” the demon snickered and put a hand to his chest, “ _I_ have a problem with Soren, certainly. But _Jesse_ has a problem with _you_.”

Petra’s breath hitched.

“You know, don’t you? You’ve always known.”

(It’s not a noose.)

“I don’t need to explain it, do I?” He tilted Jesse’s head, “You know what I’m talking about.”

“Petra?!” Lukas seemed to be the most verbal, “Petra, what’s he talking about?!”

She couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t dare. If she did, if she saw his face, she’d probably break.

(She’s already crumbling to pieces, alone here in the void, with Jesse and her demon.)

David gave a thin smile. “Petra?” He said in Jesse’s voice, “Are you going to kill me, or will you let me live?”

Dry. Her throat felt dry, her lips the same way; cracked and uncomfortable. The Dead Zone was humid, but it was burning up slowly. The smoke rose and filled the air with dark clouds, the ashes fell like snow. She was covered in a thin sheet of sweat as she breathed heavily, unable to find stability when she felt everything breaking all around her. Suddenly, it felt like the whole world was made of fragile glass. She was afraid to move.

In the sickly haze, she could have deluded herself into thinking that that was really Jesse there. Her best friend, the one person she could trust with her life, far more than anybody else; standing there, oblivious and smiling kindly.

( _She’s not even real._ )

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

(She never even felt the same way.)

Slowly, with trembling hands, Petra unsheathed her sword.

* * *

The Dead Zone was a sensitive place. That was the nature of the areas of overwhelming positives and negatives. They were so broken, such a mess, illogical and inconsistent in their rules and physics that they existed permanently at their tipping point. The Dead Zone and the High Bridge- they were like bombs waiting to be triggered, motion sensors waiting for the slightest hint of a twitch to set off whatever explosion it had in mind. _Anything_ could trigger _any_ event if the right switches were pulled.

Which is why you needed this to work.

In your seemingly endless battle, you and Axel virtually climbed to the top of the crater, reaching the mouth of the volcano after dropping who-knows-how-many bombs into the rising lava. The sky above you was frozen and polluted, like a swamp, and the smoke rising was stubborn and relentless. In your mortal state, you were susceptible to its effects, and your eyes burned and you coughed and coughed.

But you persisted. You could be stubborn too.

Even as your health depleted, as you stumbled while flying and had to resort to manually climbing the walls, you devoted your energy to avoiding Axel’s projectiles, from arrows to eggs, which you knew he threw sparingly anyway, what with his limited inventory. Your hearts were down to a desperate amount, you were bleeding, and you couldn’t fly, but-

But he was _losing_.

You climbed, higher and higher, and Axel followed you; barely grazing your skin, mere specks of blood coming from tiny scrapes as he tried and failed to get you to fall. You could laugh, and you did.

It’s almost funny, how quickly everything had gone so wrong.

This shouldn’t have happened. You should have killed the stupid kid when you had the chance. This was entirely _your fault_.

But you didn’t deny that.

You just needed to fix your mistakes. End everything now. You knew what that Infusion command did. You know that David has other plans. If Jesse wasn’t going to kill Romeo, then you had to do it yourself.

The sky was so close. You could reach it, you were _almost there_ . Your hearts were going slack and regenerating slower than a sloth, _dammit_!

So close!

So-

“Not so fast.”

You heard his words before you felt his grip on your ankle. God, you could feel the dirt and the blood and the fresh flesh against your own. His nails dug into your skin. You looked down.

Axel’s smile was downright _demonic_ , a toothy grin stained with blood and smeared with dirt. His eyes seemed hollow, yet full with anger, a darkness swirling with emotions, with.. A sense of _finality_.

(No!)

“We never go anywhere unless it’s together,” He said, as if reciting some sort of promise. You felt his weight sink you down into the crater. Your hearts were depleting again, everything hurt- No! **_NO!_ **

You didn’t see his other hand until it was right in front of you in a fist, and you fell slack, feeling a burning throb all over your face as you finally lost balance. Suddenly, the rocks were gone. The soul sand was gone. You couldn’t feel anything anymore but the air, the rushing wind, the rising heat.

You felt the lava, then-

(Two boys of red and blue danced together, under the moonlight, giggling in bliss as if they were in a dream.)

\- you were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **JUST // END 01 // [ DELETED END ]**


End file.
